Laptop Battery Cycles?

I've been doing some research that is associated with the possibility that I might sell my current MacBook Pro (2010) in order to buy the current one with the Retina Display. I've been browsing completed auctions on eBay to get an idea of what my current MBP might sell for. In the process of looking at these auctions and their descriptions I noticed a peculiar characteristic about the notebooks being sold that I have not heard or considered before; i.e. battery cycles. Many of these auctions that I've looked at make references to how many battery cycles the notebook has gone through.

So what is this battery cycles attribute about? How can I tell how many battery cycles that my notebook has been through?

sweetbrat said:

Just keep in mind, your battery health is important, as well. Battery cycles tells you (obviously) how many cycles it's been through, but depending on the age of the battery that number can be either good or bad (you don't want too many cycles, but you also don't want too few). Battery health will tell you how much of a charge it currently holds, compared to what it could hold when it was new. iStat Pro is free and can tell you the battery health.

Click to expand...

Great! Thanks guys. So I downloaded and installed the iStat Pro widget, and this is what is being reported for the Battery stats:

Health: 95%
Cycles: 69
Charge: 98%

I presume these are excellent figures and thus I must have a very healthy battery. At least in my own amateur interpretation of these numbers. But I would appreciate it if someone could validate whether or not these stats indicate that my battery is healthy and just exactly how good my battery is.