How long will primers last?

[bozo699]

a man here in the area had a fire in his garage that ignited the gun powder stored there in a cabinet ,,,the powder flashed and burnt/singed the contents ....he gave me 400+ .270 cal and 600+ 30 cal bullets and a 1000 pack of CCI 200 primers,,,the bullets were tarnished and boxes melted ...I put em in the tumbler and polised for abut an hr,,,,they came out perfect and have been used to harvest lots-0-deer !!! no problem with accuracy either,,,,bak to the primers,,,,the fire occoured inthe late 60's,,,he gave me the primers/bullets in the 90's,,,I put the primers in double freezer bags and placed in an outdoor shed that had only two sides and partial roof ...grass/weeds growing on the dirt floor ( I was afraid to hav them in the house--and I milk rattlesnakes for a hoby !!)...they; were left ther in a corner laying on a piece of wood and coverd with a piece of tin/scrap metal...after 3 yrs/winters of being left outside in such terrible weather conditions I was about to throw them away,,,I decided to 'use/try them in fire form loads...aprox 50% of them looked great/normal,,the rest were in the melted trays from the packaging,,,some smokey and tarnished and had to be pryed loose with a small screwdriver!!! I seperated the good uns from the bad ((some were so melted in the plastic I culdnt get em out without damage to anvil or cup ))....used the good first ,then the bad ,,,NO failures!!!!!,,,,you cansee what the boxes looked like....Roger
PS sorry for typos...my hands are still numb from my broken neck last spring,,,but im gettin bettr evry day,thank God

Roger,
I think your dates are a little off, I'll ask some of the old timers but I don't believe we got our plastic machines until the late 70's or early 80's prior to that they were all paper that the primers came in then red and white boxes with white trays, still impressive that they lived through all that and still fired that is awesome to know I will show this pic to our QA people, thanks for sharing.
Wayne.

 

[Joe C]

Noooo...sounds like they could possibly be terribly bad. Send them all to me and I'll do my best to check every single one to make sure it goes bang. LOL! Just kidding man. I have some primers from at least 30the years ago and they go bang everytime.

 

[hoz53]

Well this has been a very interesting and informative thread. Thanks to all who have posted. It seems I also have some Fed 215Ms that are only 8 or ten years old. If I decide to test all these primers on one day and need some help, I will post date/ location here. I have 800 CCI 250s and I am wondering if anyone can tell me how they would work in standard cartridges( 243-308-22-250 ect) I think they would be ok as Long as I started with min loads and worked up, especially for slow burning powders???