Well, I never in a million years thought I'd do this but I just spend $15 on three 250ct boxes of Diamond Strike-Anywhere matches! Here's the deal...I don't smoke, and really don't have a lot of use for matches. I do like to keep some around the house for emergencies, mostly for lighting candles, stoves, sterno etc for power outages. Generally I have a few lighters around and some UCO matches for hiking and camping.

Now you folks will probably think I've been living in a cave for the last few years, and maybe I have, but I hadn't realized til relatively recently that the good old red-and-white strike-anywhere matches were discontinued in 2010 in favor of "greener" ones that must be struck on the box. True, you can still get ones that claim to be SA but in my experience they don't work with spit unless you strike on the box. I suppose it's mostly for legal reasons that they made the change but for wilderness/survival use I really like to have matches that can be struck on something besides the box. After all, the box can get wet and the striker rendered useless, and of the strikers can get used up before the matches. My favorite improvised striker is a kydex knife sheath.

Anyone else here rathole away a bunch of matches before they were discontinued?

The modern day SA matches I've tried are worse than dollar store strike on box matches. I think the best option you have is storm matches, burns when wet and in wind, the the plastic container is pretty watertight.

Another vote for storm matches as a backup ignition source. A good container is quite important. I generally use a Bic as my routine appliance for this task.

I had a couple Bic lighters including the one I found frozen in the park last winter. Based on the found lighter's resilience to bad times I bought a 5 pack of Bics to populate all my kits (packs, vests et al). Recently I bought another 5 pack just to stash away. Bics in general are inexpensive, and they hold up well to rough and wet handling. It's hard for me to justify buying matches.

I squirreled away about 10 boxes of Ohio Blue Tips years ago when I heard they were going out of business. Glad I did, as it's pretty much impossible to find a good strike-anywhere match nowadays. Even regular kitchen safety matches are getting harder to find around here. I guess people just don't buy matches like they used to.

two mini bics in every coat pocket and kit.

but still use old SA matches when starting slash piles that need cleaning up in the late fall/early winter.

They had to get rid of them because mice could chew on them and cause a fire.

Well, at lease that's what my grandma told me when I was 5.

I have several boxes of the green tip SA type. Not nearly as good as the ones from years ago.

But I also have lots of storm matches, including a couple tins of Coleman collectibles. What great packages.

Used to be able to strike matches on my zipper. The new ones fail.

A while back I bought some strike-on-box kitchen matches (the 2" long wooden ones). It was a five-pack of boxes, each box containing 250 matches. These were intended for emergency kit use, even though they were only strike-on-box, which is all I could find. They are "Kroger" brand - our local grocery store. These are worthless. When you strike them, something happens because you see smoke. But they never burst into flame and are totally dead after the phosphorus (or whatever is on match heads these days) finishes smoldering. You couldn't light a fire with these worthless sticks if you had too.

Are the newer strike-anywhere matches even worse than these? Are these new, devolved, matches a result of some lawyer/lawsuit thing, or just poor quality control and corporate desire for profits by making things as cheap as possible?

Strike anywhere are pretty difficult to find today, I can only seem to get the Swan Vesta Matches from the local Supermarket.

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=255284203

I can't find the Scottish Bluebell Matches anywhere! Get them while you still can.

BCB NATO Windproof matches are pretty expensive but they work and they work very well.

http://www.strikeforcesupplies.co.uk/index.php?method=stock&id=20012&from=40