Battery $1, $1, $1

I noticed the other day that I no longer see any of the battery mexicans or the squeaky toy chinese ladies. Where did they go? It may be that I am spending less time on the subway, but I expressed my worries to my friend in SC. She had some theories:

As far as the price of batteries going up is concerned I'm not sure that's the
problem. At Home Depot, here in Columbia, you can get a 24 pack of AA
energizer batteries for 11.22 after taxes which would yield a profit of 3
cents a battery but at Sam's Club a 24 pack of generic AA batteries is 12.47
giving you a loss of 2 cents a battery if you are selling 2 for a dollar. I
can only imagine, prices being what they are up there, that there might be an
even greater loss. On the other hand... if you order batteries from
CheapBatteries.com you can get them for 21 cents each and I'm not sure how
much the shipping might be but it can't add that much to each battery, less
than a cent really because I think you get something like 1500.00 batteries.
Therefore, my guess is that, because of rising internet connection prices,
those people selling the batteries have had to drop their connections or
memberships to the cafes and cannot order their batteries online, making the
profit margin drop and causing them to turn to other occupations.

OR

Because the threat level has risen in NYC, they aren't allowed to bring large
quantities of them on trains because they could use them as some sort of
explosive.

OR OR

Nobody uses disposable batteries anymore because of the recharable types.

OR OR OR

The heat caused all the batteries to leak and everyone selling them is in the
hospital from acid burns.

Hope that helps.

jme