How Long do primers last...

Well at least 76 years. I had a friend give me 376 pieces of primed 30-06 brass that had bullets and powder pulled.
It was 1943 LC and the stuff looked pretty nice as you could still see the annealing coloration so I loaded up 20 rounds just to see what it would do.
Shot it thru my Smith-Corona 1943 03 and it shot OK. Velocities were consistent and with open sights 10 shots at about 2 MOA. My normal load is better but not much and that’s about as good as my eyes can do.

These primers may be the corrosive type so I will have to clean each time I fire these but not a big deal as I do that anyway. I punched one out and replaced it with a Federal and the velocity dropped 40fps so these must still be pretty hot for 76 year olds.

That’s pretty cool. I guess the military primers were a good bit hotter than today’s commercial primers.

Good stuff, they can last a long time I have no idea how long but I have shot ammo from the 40s that shot well. I have loaded some with primers that were from an estate sale that were marked for 75 cents from Gibsons.

I was given some really old CCI #250 primers when I first started loading my 270 Win. I shot them and they worked great. I think they were from the late 60's or early 70's.

Lol that’s not old... I have a couple hundred magnum pistol primers I bought in the late 70’s for loading 44 magnum that I have not got around to using yet.

Ok, true! But it's the oldest primers I have. And they work great.

Tell that to my back after a weekend working at the lease

I've always heard from the olds, keep them in a temp controlled environment and they will last forever or at least longer than me. Sounds like a lot of other things, they were right.

keep them dry and put up. They will last a life time if you don't use them but what fun would that be????