I bought three bags of paydirt I couldn’t verify.
This is the long-form of why Grubstake Goodsexists. The short version: the day you can’t tell which claim a bag came from is the day the dollar in the pan stops meaning anything. So we publish the chain — claim name, lab number, lot ID — before the bag ships. The rest of the site is the receipts.
01 · What brought us here
Unverified by default.
The marketplace sells paydirt without telling you which claim it came from — so a buyer who gets a bad bag has no way to tell the difference between bad luck and a bad lot.
In the corner of the marketplace where paydirt is sold, almost every bag ships with two things: a clay seal and a one-liner on the box.
There is no claim name. No lab number. No PDF that gives you the milligram weight somebody supposedly measured. If the bag pans out, it could be luck. If it doesn’t, you have no way to tell whether the lot was a fluke or whether the lot was bunk.
That was the bag I bought three times in a row. One produced visible flakes. One produced a few specks. One produced nothing — and I had no document, no lot ID, no lab number that could tell me which of those was a fluke and which was a baseline.
02 · What every Grubstake bag publishes
Three things, then a bag. Not the other way around.
Every Grubstake bag ships the same three things, in this order — and the bag goes out only after each of them is on the record. If any one is missing, the lot does not ship.
- Named U.S. claim
A named, dated claim — not "paydirt" in the abstract.
Every bag is pulled from one of five U.S. claims, by its operator, never from a generic repackaging house.
The state, the county, the claim name, and the lot ID travel with the bag. The same lot ID is the join key on every certificate PDF and every unboxing photo we publish — so the claim name on the seal is the claim name on the catalog and the claim name on the certificate.
- Third-party lab certificate
A real assay, by name and batch number.
The gold weight is measured by Bureau Veritas, Inspectorate, SGS, Assay Lab, or ALS — never in-house.
The lab name, the batch number, and the PDF are published before the bag ships. The certificate is dated, the bag is sealed, and the buyer can re-verify the milligram weight against the same assay report the catalog cites.
- FTC-safe disclosure
Gold content stated lot by lot, not by category.
Lab-screened placer is sold as lab-screened placer. Guaranteed Gold is sold as Guaranteed Gold.
The two SKUs are never combined. If the listing does not cite a lab number and a lot number, the bag does not ship. The disclosure is the same on the website, the certificate, and the sticker under the seal.
03 · The promise
Every state, every bag, every gram, on the record.
Browse the catalog and you’ll find the same lot IDs that live in the certificate library. The same lab numbers that show up on the bag’s paperwork. The same claim name on the seal that’s pinned to the claims map.
The promise is short: if the catalog does not cite a lab number and a lot number for a bag, we do not ship that bag. If the certificate and the lot ID do not agree, the bag does not ship. If the unboxing photo and the lot ID do not match, the bag does not ship. The chain is the product.
Which is why the rest of this site is mostly paperwork. The chain, the certificates, the claims map, and the unboxing gallery are the long form of what the catalog is short for: a bag, on the record.
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