Primer shelf life

[Mike40-11]

Not a question this time. An answer of sorts.
In early 2020, when "everything is sold out everywhere", was just getting started, I picked up several thousand OLD primers at an auction.

The oldest, near as I can tell, were these Western Improved Non-Mercuric, Non-Corrosive. 1950s vintage I believe. You can see from the box that the storage conditions were less than ideal at some point. There was a bunch of vintage ammo sold in the same auction that was ROUGH. Lots of corrosion and boxes that had obviously been wet.

I've loaded up a dozen or so in small pistol, just to see. They all fired. Then I loaded up 100 in 300 Blackout. Fired off about 50 yesterday with zero misfires, malfunctions, or any occurrence of note.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5uiwpm3an9g7qub/western%20primers.jpg?dl=0

 

[Unclenick]

Primers seem to be pretty much like black powder in that they don't deteriorate with time unless a really extreme storage condition is at work. This is why you never hear the shooting industry suggest you smell your primers before using them. They don't have the spontaneous deterioration that nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin do. That said, the new Federal Catalyst primer uses nitrocellulose, so you can expect it won't follow this rule.