Eight honest answers to the questions a first-time buyer actually asks.

Yes — every batch is measured by an independent assay lab (Bureau Veritas, Inspectorate, SGS, Assay Lab, or ALS), never in-house, and the lab number, the batch number, and the date of assay are posted with the bag before it ships.

The published certificate is the same one the lab signed off on: gold weight in milligrams, the lot ID, and the lab's own seal — so the buyer can re-verify the figure against the PDF the site links to.

Each lot's PDF is also indexed lot by lot in the certificate library, so you can match every figure on the bag against the matching assay record by batch number.

Lab variance is normal to around ±5%; the assay is per-lot, not per-stamp, so a single bag can come in light or heavy without failing the lot certification. The bag is opened in front of camera only after the certificate is in-hand — that is the order the chain runs in.

If the recovered weight is meaningfully short of the stamped figure, photograph the bag, the seal, the lot ID, and the certificate, and email the lab number and lot ID to the operator on the contact page — a per-lot re-verification runs from there.

Five named U.S. claims — Nome Belt (Alaska), Clear Creek (Colorado), Dahlonega / Pine Mountain (Georgia), Henderson Fork (North Carolina), and Boise Basin (Idaho). Each lot is tagged to a specific claim, by a specific county, run by its operator.

Nothing is repackaged from a generic source. The seal on the bag, the entry on the certificate, and the slot on the claims map all share the same lot ID, so a $24 bag and a $200 multi-gram bag can both be traced back to a single claim and operator on a single map.

Every bag, certificate, and listing is built to FTC-criteria for the gold-content category: lot-by-lot milligram disclosure on the website, on the certificate, and on the sticker under the seal — never by category, never by a "guaranteed" tagline that is not backed by a published assay.

Lab-screened placer is sold as lab-screened placer. Guaranteed Gold is sold as Guaranteed Gold. The two SKUs are never combined in a single listing, and any buyer can re-verify the figure against the assay the certificate cites — which is what an FTC-defensible gold-content statement is supposed to look like in writing.

Every certificate is a four-field record — lab name, batch number, certified grams, and the date of assay — in that order, on a single page. The lot ID stamped on the bag's seal is the same lot ID on the certificate; matched correctly, the buyer can re-verify the figure against the lab's own assay report.

The trace-and-verify page carries a sample certificate that walks each field line by line, so a first-time buyer can match the bag they have in front of them against the per-bag example in the same layout.

Yes — every bag ships pre-sealed in a clay that releases in tap water, so a single 1-lb bag works at the kitchen sink with a tub, a classifier, a pan, and a snuffer bottle. No recirculating sluice, no generator, no mercury.

The walkthrough page walks pre-soak, the four-motion pan, and snuffer-bottle recovery in that order, plus a one-paragraph "what to do with the concentrates" guide so a first-time buyer can finish the bag the same day it arrives.

Gold content is the recovered gold weight in milligrams, measured per batch by an assay lab. Placer content is the host material — sand, black sand, magnetite, the heavy fraction — that the gold travels with when it is dug. The two figures are not interchangeable, and the certificate reports them separately.

Lab-screened placer bags are sold and labeled as placer: a published milligram figure, a published lot, a lab-assayed weight in black sand. Guaranteed Gold bags are sold and labeled as Guaranteed Gold: a stamped milligram figure, a per-lot re-verification, and a published assay that matches. The certificate library keeps the two separate so a re-verification can run bag by bag.

Yes — every catalog SKU is joined to a roster entry (a single lot on a single claim) on a one-to-one basis. The lot ID on the bag is the lot ID on the certificate, and the lot ID on the certificate is the same lot ID the SKU card on the catalog cites.

The certificate library is keyed by lot and by state, so a buyer can match a published assay against the SKU they intend to order before they buy. If a lot is sold out, the next-lot SKU on the same claim carries the same chain of provenance, just one batch newer.