Do BD c4 Cams have a shelf life.

A man is selling his trad rack. Most pieces are unused and nothing has ever taken a fall. But they are from 2012. I figured I'd have to re-sling them, but do the actual cams have a shelf life? Tips on building your trad rack with a low budget?

The short answer is no, there is not a shelf life. Plenty of folks still use Friends from the 1970’s. Heck, my rack is mostly a mix of C4s I bought around 2009. Just do your due diligence and inspect them in person before buying.

If they've been stored properly away from sunlight then the slings should still be good to go.  Nylon doesn't degrade with age if stored away from UV, but not a bad idea to resling them if you're at all unsure since it costs very little and will last for a longtime afterwards.  Besides that, everything else on the cams is either metal or hard plastic and that isn't going to degrade at all.  

Use the same strategy for evaluating the equipment that you use fo looking at your partner's rack... if it looks beat or non function, than it is beat.  If it looks good, it probably is good.

I tossed a bunch of nylon soft-goods (REI harnesses, dogbones, runners, and slings) that I bought in the 90s and stored over the next 2 decades while I was raising my kiddos, and I regret throwing them out.  I am regularly climbing with un-reslung c4 cams that I bought in 97 or so, and they work better than some of the beat up stuff that is decades newer.  The only reason I don't climb with my set of rigid stem friends is that I don't like them as much as the c4s o I bought doubles of them... the old friends work just fine, too.

There is a long thread from a couple weeks ago about exactly this. Short answer: no.

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/120082049/old-c4s-how-old-is-too-old