How buying a claim works in Canada
A claim is a registered right to the minerals under a defined piece of ground, held in a provincial or territorial registry. Buying one means the registered holder transfers that title to you inside the registry — Mineral Titles Online in B.C., the Mining Recorder in Yukon, MLAS in Ontario, GESTIM in Quebec, NovaROC in Nova Scotia. LocalKarat is where you find the seller; the registry is where the sale actually happens.
Placer or mineral?
Placer claims cover gold in gravels — what a pan, sluice or small operation recovers from creeks and old channels. Mineral (quartz, hard-rock) claims cover gold in the rock itself. Recreational and small-scale prospectors are almost always shopping for placer ground, and in B.C. and Yukon a claim is also what makes a sluice or high-banker legal to run.
Before you pay anyone
- Look the tenure up yourself in the registry: number, holder, boundaries, good-to date, work and fee obligations.
- Walk the ground if you can — claim posts, access, water, and neighbouring tenures tell you what the listing does not.
- Check parks, protected areas, and First Nations settlement or treaty lands; a claim does not override land access rules.
- Remember that a claim for sale is still someone's claim — no panning on it without the holder's written permission.