Question about lithium primaries

[HeyGuysWatchThis]

I recently got a bunch of out of the package 223 batteries that I will be disassembling to put into my MiNi 123. The thing is, some of them are Duracells that are not dated. Does anyone have a guess as to what date they are? Even if they are "expired" they should still work, right? For 25 cents for each 223, I'm not too concerned if I get half the runtime or whatever. My only real concern is whether they are going to explode or something.

 

[Robin24k]

Generally the date has to do with capacity and not safety. I think it's guaranteed to be 80% or 90% by that date. Do the batteries all have the same packaging and are Made in USA?

I'm not so sure about disassembling them though...are there 123's inside the 223?

 

[HeyGuysWatchThis]

Here's a picture of the same battery pack, but apparently Panasonic labels them CR-P2:

There are 2 CR123s in there with a connector at the end you can't see, making it a 6 volt battery pack. The ones I have are a mix of Duracells and Energizers. Like I said, the main concern for me is safety, but even if they're only 50%, for 12.5 cents I can live with that and not be shy with high mode. :twothumbs

 

[Moonshadow]

Interesting - I have some similar ones (2CR5M) which I figured were probably also just a couple of 123s inside a plastic holder, although up to now I haven't taken one apart to find out.

Since you are going to be using them in a single-cell light it should be OK - you aren't going to be running into any problems with mismatched cells for instance - but if you are going to be doing a lot of this sort of thing a ZTS or Ansmann battery tester would probably be a sensible investment.