That’s right four hundred forty masks (6 cents per). Yes it’s Amazon but this is a good deal.

This is the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08J1THV9G

It is from a sub-company of Amazon that specializes in deals so it is legit-ish. The ones a close friend received came in an official 3M branded box (a huge brown box not retail packaging).

They’re individually packaged in the official sealed wrappers, had lot codes on them and looked to be in good shape. No weird smells either and the elastic and nose pieces seemed fine. No expiration dates unfortunately if that’s super important but the box had a barcode and I suppose you could contact 3M and ask about that lot number.

  • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    10 days ago

    Wait what? How is this possible? I don’t buy from amazon (keeping my info out of their system) but I may ask someone to order these for me. Though, 440 masks is a lot. Wow.

    • bigpharmasutra [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      These are left over cases from the original pandemic in 2019/2020 that wholesalers basically got rid of and resellers picked them up for next to nothing. When the last batch of these popped up there was a photo someone took of a dozen or so cases piled up to go out to the garbage. I use my box as backup and to give to anyone that comes over to the house. Masks are too expensive to be just giving them out to randos.

      • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Interesting, in 2019-2020 there was a pretty severe shortage iirc. Anyway I supposedly have a box of these on order and I hope they arrive. There was a famous story of Ikea having a stash of 60,000 or so masks warehoused from the 2002 SARS-1 outbreak, and donating them to a hospital in 2019 or 2020, and they were still perfectly good.

        I have a bunch of cheap KN95 around and I give those out fairly freely. I guess these will be better. The rubber bands keep breaking though.

        • bigpharmasutra [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          There was a severe shortage, then everyone basically stopped masking, so the supply that 3M created basically just sat there and this is the end result.

          The bands on these are for shit but they’re fantastic for small/medium size heads. Sadly, my bowling ball sized melon is too large and it creates a poor fit. The V-Flex’s are much better IMO.

    • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      It’s being clearanced. The company would have to throw them out within months anyways as they can’t sell expired masks and can’t use them and I guess they must have many tens of thousands of these to get rid of. Some of it could be them just not wanting to carry them anymore either, wanting to free up the space but most are probably not that new either. That and probably some weird automated pricing system as even then it does seem kind of low.