(ET) When did they start making car batteries out of gold?? :-)

[tb <tbamc gbta net>]

I've been familiar with the price of deep-cycle batteries for the E-T the 
last 4 or 5 years, but for no definite reason (weight, sales volume, etc) 
thought they were considerably more expensive than car batteries.

Had to buy a car battery recently and found that O'Reilly had nothing less 
than $105.  That's not much less than new E-T batteries and a huge 
increase in the last 10 years or so.

I would GUESS that technology and manufacturing isn't significantly 
different in the last 10, 20, 30 (?) years so just curious as to why the 
big jump?  Is lead scarce?  EPA?  Greed?  :-)

Thanks.

Thon