Yo Horse,

I have a bunch of old seeds stored, and have germed some that where over 30 years old. My observations have been that really old seeds tend to either germ or not, and the older they are the higher the number of "nots". And the amount of strange or mutant starts are the same as fresh seeds. So my conclusion is that there is no harm geneticly to long term storage, just the amount of viable seeds decreases.

And the larger the gene pool the better. My rule of thumb has been 10 minium for feminized seed 20 for regular seeds. All of that said I realize that lucky beats hard work. I once had two seeds from Africa, something we called "black hockey puck" back then. Only one germed, but turned out to be a "perfect" plant in all respects. Go figure.

Jessica Simspon? How about Veronica Lake! (go look that one up in a history book)LOL