Jon Elson said something like:
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:

I recently ordered on eBay 100 energizer AA batteries.

I tested them using a simple battery tester from radio shack. 4 were
dead,
one was near death, and 95 were at an identical high mark, but just a
"little" below an energizer I bought from a retail package from Home
Depot.
The tester is simple and unmetered, save for a "75%" mark. The needle
moves
up to *almost* the same spot as my control (retail) battery does.

They were shipped in 2 corrugated cardboard boxes, roughly the height of
an
AA cell. 50 in each, all standing up on the negative (flat) end. So
(especially if they are stacked) the top and bottom of all the batteries
are
touching the top and bottom of the cardboard box. HUGE speculation: If
the
cardboard is even minutely conductive (humidity, acidity, or whatever)
then
I have effectively a wired in parallel 1.5V "50xAA-amp" "battery" that is
shorting through its own packaging (?)

Is there another possibility for this, other than just lesser quality
batteries? And is the cardboard shorting even possible? I'm working
with
the seller to try to figure this one out. He's asking about possibly
putting a plastic or foam sheet above or below them. I'd appreciate your
thoughts on all of this.

One possibility is they are "NOS", ie. new, old stock, like in 8-10
years old,
sitting on some shelf in a little Walgreens store or something, and they
finally
dumped them. Electronic distributors also get these in 50 and larger
cases,
without the blister pack. Or maybe the eBay seller took them out of the
blister packs because they said "best used before 1998".

No, they're mostly dated 2011 and 2012...




--
Puzzle: You are given a deck of cards all face down
except for 10 cards mixed in which are face up.
If you are in a pitch black room, how do you divide
the deck into two piles (may be uneven) that each
contain the same number of face-up cards?
Answer (rot13): Sebz naljurer va gur qrpx, qrny bhg
gra pneqf naq syvc gurz bire.