Battery authenticity check

I wonder if anyone could help me clarify the following question: If an original Lenovo Thinkpad battery is re-celled by a dealer, do I have any way to check this without actually opening the battery? For example, will the Power Manager (I still use Win7 on my X220) battery info show this or not? Power Manager does display the manufacturer (e.g. Panasonic or Sanyo or LGC), the date of manufacture, the number of cycles, date first used and so on.

The reason I'm asking is that I want to buy a X220 battery on ebay (UK) and the seller (a shop with 99% rating) describes it as genuine, original, brand new (though NOS, made a couple of years ago) Thinkpad battery with the correct FRU and everything but says it is "open box", that is, it's supposed to be new, in the original Lenovo box, but not sealed. Since the price is quite low (about 50% of similar ones in sealed box), I'm afraid it might have been tampered with (re-celled, hacked, who knows). But if I can check this with Power Manager, I'd take the risk and order, since in the worst case, I can file an ebay complaint

 

You can at least see how many power cycled it's had.

Not sure about the rest.

 

Well, it's supposed to be new, so the power cycle should be zero. But the main point is how can I check if the cells are genuine, original ones

 

You can't, there is no memory on each cell that states that data, only on the wrapper, but its pretty hard to open a battery casing without mark, just to replace its cells..

 

New generally has 1-3 cycles from the manufacturer.

 

I have just bought a 6-cell, 70+ battery for my T520 (the battery is a Sanyo 45N1001) and am wondering if it's guaranteed genuine or not.

It came in a sealed (red Lenovo tape) original box, but the date on the box (2017-03) is not the same as on the battery itself (2016-11-29). Everything on the battery looks fine, no misspellings. I have checked with Lenovo Power Manager, and it displays exactly the same bar code nr. and manufacturing date as the bar code sticker on the battery itself. Lenovo Power Manager also shows 0 cycles, 0% wear, and full capacity (in fact, slightly higher than the designed 56Wh: 59Wh, as is often the case with brand new batteries).

BUT: it was completely empty (discharged) out of the box, as I guess it sat on a shelf in a warehouse for 3+ years. I charged it fully, but then it dropped to 20% from 100% in less than 2.5 hours on my T520 (with light use, mainly web browsing, but the Power Plan set to Maximum Performance, so max screen brightness). The battery got also a bit warm (nothing too bad, around 36 degrees C).

What is would really like to know is whether re-celled counterfeits have become so perfect these days that this could be one. Or do the matching bar code and date guarantee that it is a genuine battery? I'm aware that a 3+ year-old battery may not hold charge so well (especially a Sanyo one), but I was a bit surprised by it lasting only about 2 hours

 

Here are some photos:


45N1001 - 1ZW3L6BX181 - 2016.11

45N1000/45N1001 -1ZW3L6BX181 - 2016.11