Hmmm, I just handed over two 1lb'ers of Varget to a friend last night, and similarly, we could not find any lot# info on the bottle. I am used to seeing a bright orange label, either on the side or on the bottom, with a zillion-digit number (of which, the last four digits are in fact the lot number). The bottles that I gave him, had the same bilingual "not for resale in the U.S.A" label on it as yours does.
I am interested in finding out where your bought your powder. Mine came from Higginson's, who is a (the?) Canadian importer for Hodgdon. It would make sense that Higginson's would add a bilngual label (so that it would be legal for sale in Canada), I can also see a certain amount of sense in including the "not for resale in USA" bit too, perhaps as part of their agreement with Hodgdon. But as to why there isn't a (visible?) lot number on the container, that is really odd.
I will contact Higginsons. and see what I can find out about the mystery of the missing lot numbers, and I'll also mention this case of the unusually quick Varget.
Kombayotch, yup, $33/lb is proably respresentative of a decent retail price in Canada. Long gone are the days of $20/lb powder at your local gun store. Part of the difference is of course the CAD:USD exchange rate, perhaps it is (slightly) less scandalous if you look at it as being USD25.75/lb.
You can do a bit better than that if you buy in larger quantities; the best prices I know of are from
http://www.higginsonpowders.com/images/08hp1.pdf, however you have to add to those prices the costs of getting it in your hands (not always unreasonable, but to compare apples to apples w.r.t. gun store prices, you have to include this).
I still think in my head that my .308 match ammo costs "about 40c/round", even though every time I do the math it is well north of 50c/round no matter what accounting assumptions I make.
Cheers,
