Unsold Plague Capacitors

[Perry Babin]

What are the chances that plague capacitors are still in stock and being sold?

[stj]

depends on your source - ebay probably cant be trusted.

[dmill89]

depends on your source - ebay probably cant be trusted.

^This, they should be well out of the inventory of major suppliers by now (DigiKey, Mouser, Newark, etc.). But I'm sure there are some still kicking around somewhere. Ebay is loaded with counterfeits as well as old inventory.

And while the true "plague era" caps should be largely gone by now (there is a good chance that most remaining would have bloated in storage by now, and if not the likely will quickly after power is applied), there are still new production sub-par caps out there that aren't reliable (particularly from the "less reputable" brands).

[Perry Babin]

I was hoping to hear that the manufacturers bought back all defective caps but it's more likely that they were sold.

Yes. Amazon and Ebay are bad for counterfeits, especially obsolete semiconductors, which they always have readily available.

I don't see much on Cornell Dubilier caps. I used quite a few and still recommend them. Is there a reason they aren't commonly mentioned? Quality? Price?

I deal with a lot of people (tech support) who blindly replaced capacitors (many plague caps) in their beloved collections (mainly amplifiers) and put them into storage. It's a shame that many will be damaged by leaky caps when the originals would have done no damage.

[dmill89]

I was hoping to hear that the manufacturers bought back all defective caps but it's more likely that they were sold.

I'm not aware of any such buybacks (and only the more reputable manufactures would even consider such a thing), but even if that did occur, defective/recalled products often have a way of "leaking" out into the wild (often claimed to be disposed of but smuggled out of the factory/warehouse and resold instead).

I don't see much on Cornell Dubilier caps. I used quite a few and still recommend them. Is there a reason they aren't commonly mentioned? Quality? Price?

I've used them before with no issues, and they are generally regarded as a good/reputable manufacture. The main reason they aren't commonly mentioned here is likely that they aren't a major player in low-esr/computer grade caps which are the most common subject of posts on this forum.

[stj]

i dont even see dubiliier caps at my suppliers,
when i did i used the low esr red ones to repair psu's and they never failed.

[momaka]

It wasn't too long ago when I saw a bunch of (NOS) Rubycon MFZ (the 6.3V 2700 uF variety that like to bulge in storage / without use) on eBay - maybe about 3-4 months ago.
So yes, you can still find "plague" -era Japanese caps. Same with UCC KZG series. In fact, some sellers are unaware of this and even have pictures of their stock on which you can clearly see some of the caps bulging and/or leaking.

As for crap-cap brands - those are still sold everywhere and will likely continue to be sold for many many more years, if not indefinitely. Same with garbage (counterfeit) silicon parts.