Kind of a sad story....when I was making these battery packs and needed the typical D or C cell end plates for positive and negative contacts, I used to strip them out of old alkaline batteries I had. Eventually I ran out and started looking for just the contact plates, and no one had them anywhere.
Finally, I came across a tool and die stamping company in Connecticut which made them for Duracel and Eveready until they got outsourced to China. Most of the USA tool and die companies went out of business, and if lucky, sold their presses to China. Well this one company still had a box of 5,000 each of the top and bottom end plates, and after I listened to his sadness at losing his company, he offered to ship both boxes to me for free.
It was a bittersweet gift from a disillusioned company owner, but I still have at least 4,800 of each D cell end plates. Life is funny.
