You could always do a germination test on them yourself.

yes i could.

however that would not help me determine if i need to buy the same seeds, or let me know if they are ok to trade with.

i guess i could start them tonight, would be interesting to see how long it takes them to sprout

I don't know if a dehydrator will kill the seeds or not. I'm sure it will lessen the overall length of viability, but maybe they will sprout in the short term.
Do a paper towel germination test. The seeds sprout quickly if they are viable and you can get a good % count that way.

Moisten a small piece of paper towel. You want it damp not soaking wet.
Place seeds on the wet towel. Add as many as you can to get a true measure of viability, meaning don't add 5 seeds unless you've only got a few seeds. If you've got a few hundred seeds at least 25 would be nice.
Fold towel over seeds.
Place the paper towel in a baggie and seal it. If it is a sandwich baggie, just tuck the opening under, you want to keep the moisture in is all.
Place the baggie in a warm place like on top of your fridge.
After a few days, check to see if the seeds have sprouted.
They should start sprouting in a few days. Some tomato or pepper seeds take about a week. After that point, you can count how many sprouted and figure out the percentage rate of germination.
Remy

they require a little bit more hydrating than normal so maybe soaking them for a day would be the best option prior to seeding, however 21 of 25 seeds germinated giving me a germination rate of 84% correct? two seeds had greyish fuzzy mold on them, two looked like they had wicked every molecule of water away from the surrounding paper and were sitting on a dry spot without germinating.

Seeds do not know how they have been dried. It all depends on the temp of your deydrator. I beleive that 125 deg temps will render the seeds useless. For what it's worth i dry all of my pepper seeds in a dehydrator but I put it on the lowest temp which is about 95 deg. and I have just sprouted some that are over 4 yrs old.

Dale

Trent,
That's great news!

Dale,
See now I had no clue dehydrators could be run on low temps like that. I thought they ran higher which would reduce germination significantly.
Remy

I read this a few weeks ago after planting some carolina reaper seeds from peppers i put through a dehydrator. the seeds were almost 2 years old and amazingly they sprouted. i do think that it helped that i dehydrated them at a very low temp overall, the peppera took 2 or 3 days to dry out at the temp i had the dehydrator at.