One really questionable manner one can get rechargeable AAs from is used electronics from thrift stores, flea markets, etc.

People sometimes forget to remove their batteries. Usually you find alkaline batteries that have reenacted the Battle of Stalingrad on the insides of the device, but occasionally you’ll find NIMH batteries. (Not often, rechargeables are a little pricey!)

Or, in the case of two 1300mAh “GP” batteries: An old NIMH/NICD battery charger!

In my experience NIMH batteries age pretty gracefully all things considered. I’d say even okayish batteries can make it ~20 years before going weird, at which point it’s… Idk about a 50/50 chance of the battery “cheating death” or just failing to hold a charge.

Parasitic ESR can increase, but from my own experience if my vintage batteries have done this, it isn’t obvious.

Oh! I have four 2450 mAh “Energizer” branded batteries! Found them in an old plug-in-play console, and they could very well hail from the very late 1990s/early 2000s. Now these ones are beginning to fail to hold a charge, as even fresh off the charger they’ll self discharge after a couple hours just sitting on the counter or something. Failure engineering is neat stuff!

What I thought would be a quick post is quickly turning into an autistic infodump… Oh well. Gonna keep infodumping!

NIMH can “leak”, but from what I’ve seen this manifests as “fluff” near the positive terminal where the crimp lives.

NICD batteries do this way more… Honestly fuck NICD batteries! The only ones I’ve used that haven’t been temperamental are the builtin ones in my old Sears electric drill my grandpap gave me. The battery life kinda sucks, but I excuse that under the “it’s probably from the 90s, consumer grade high current rechargeable batteries just sucked back then” pretext.

And for whatever batshit insane reason NICD batteries are still being made. If the factories were American or something I’d be all like “Ah, that’s just typical dysfunctional fascist shithole type stuff. Government contracts and capitalists flooding their outdated products onto the market.”

But no. All the brand new NICD batteries I’ve come across are Chinese. Why? Does Min from Inner Mongolia need them for her batshit insane hobby projects!?

LIKE OH MY GOD JUST RETOOL THOSE FACTORIES TO MAKE NIMH BATTERIES! It probably wouldn’t be a very long or expensive retooling process, and you’d probably save money from not needing to buy cadmium.

Maybe the contracts or whatever for making cheap solar garden lights is lucrative or something idk.

I don’t throw my dead rechargeable batteries out. I lie to myself by saying I have to recycle them, but the real reason is simple: Object empathy.

One of those “GP” batteries tested plenty fine, but the other showed signs of failing to hold a charge.

That was “idk how long ago” but just last night I decided to go “Ah fuck it, I’mma put some of those bad cells on the charger and see what happens”.

To my surprise: That “bad” cell took a charge and is doing pretty alright! Must of not been all that after all.

It still gives off vibes of “I’m old and don’t hold as much of a charge”, but it’s uh… It’s currently making one of those flashing bulbs you find bundled in incandescent christmas light sets go, and it’s been doing so for a good few hours at this point, complete with sitting around for a few hours not connected to anything.

So that’s a genuinely pleasant little surprise!