Rather than start a new thread, I just stuck with this one since it is about ba!ls.
I did a little experiment today. I was out in the garage cleaning a hundred or so of the bal!s I pulled out of the pond on our 10th hole a few days ago. (It was a crappy day and no one was on the course, so I took a bucket and my long ball retriever and killed an hour and a half of my not-so-busy schedule.) I have always wondered what the difference is between a water-logged ball and a perfectly good one. Many of the bal!s I pulled out were the newest versions of popular bal!s, so I know they couldn't have been in that pond for more than a season. Others looked like they had been there for a few years.
So, I picked out a bunch of what seemed like good, present model specimens and some which were obviously old and water-logged. I then pulled out the scale I use for weighing small mixtures of epoxy where mixing exact quantities to the 10th of a gram is required. I put a brand new, still-in-the-sleeve Pro V1 on the scale and got a reading of 45.7 grams. To be sure about that weight, I put 2 more Pro V1s from 2 different boxes and got the same reading. Then I took a Pro V1, same 2016 version as the others that had been in the water for some time this year. 45.8 grams. Another 45.7, same as the new ones. Then I found an older Pro V1 model, which looked like it had been in that pond awhile longer. 46.3 grams. Finally I found an old Callaway HX Tour. Could have been there for years. I bounced it on the concrete. Thud. Like a rock. Weighed it. Came in at 48.4 grams.

My advice, don't buy just any old version of used bal!s. Stick with the most recent version. Even if they were in the water for a time, that time can't be that long if it's a new version of the ball. Consequently, it would likely not be affected by any water intrusion to speak of.
On a side note, two of the ba!ls I found in the pond were my own!

They had been customized by Titleist with my 3 lines of copy, a custom number, as well as my personal Sharpee marks. So I know they were mine. They were Pro V1x models, which I was playing early in the year. (I switched back to the Pro V1 model in the mid summer.) So they were in there at least for 5 or 6 months. Weighed in at 45.7, just like my new ones.
