"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
To clarify, I was aware of alnicos (most speakers had them--for most
of my pre-teen and teen years, anyway) but wasn't aware of the
possibility of demagnetizing any "permanent" magnets.


I'm in my late fifties. I have a fairly large collection of odd-n-ends
alnico magnets from speaker pull-outs I've kept since my teens.

They're all weaker than they were, but they're all still magnets, and still
useful for holding drawings, etc.

To those insisting that alnico magnets lose their strength almost instantly
in the absence of a keepe, consider: Millions of kitchen pot holders were
made in the fifties, sixties, and seventies with a small 3/16^2 x 3/4"
alnico bar magnet within the hanging loop (for hanging the thing on your
fridge or oven door).

They were made, shipped, stored, and usually used in the home without any
keeper of any sort -- usually when thrown in a drawer, they didn't even have
the benefit of being near a ferrous substance. But they kept their
strength - enough to hang the things up - for _years_.

LLoyd