---
title: "US law exempts worked-ivory items under 200 grams and made before July 6, 2016 from its domestic ivory-sale ban (the de minimis exception)"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://www.fws.gov/frequently-asked-questions-about-elephant-ivory"
source_title: "Elephant Ivory FAQs"
source_author: "US Fish & Wildlife Service"
source_date: "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "less than 200 grams ... manufactured or handcrafted before July 6, 2016"
source_tier: 1
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-instrument-ivory-passport.md, 2026-07-10"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "[[2026-07-09-hop-instrument-ivory-passport]]"
audit_status: "capture-verified | 2026-07-10 cross-model audit (fable): fws.gov guidance re-read directly — 'less than 200 grams' and 'manufactured or handcrafted before July 6, 2016' confirmed verbatim, and the both-required reading confirmed; precision appended in-body: weight + date are necessary but not sufficient (the exemption also requires worked ivory, <50% of the item by value and by volume, and an import/removal-date window — pre-1990-01-18 import or pre-1976-02-26 removal)"
date_created: "2026-07-10T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["cites","law","conservation-biology","ivory","musical-instruments","de-minimis"]
audits: ["2026-07-09 claude-fable-5"]
drafted_in: ["prior-to-february-26-1976"]
---


Alongside the near-total US ban on commercial trade in African elephant ivory, US Fish & Wildlife Service guidance carves out a "de minimis" exception: an item may qualify for domestic sale when it contains a small, incidental amount of worked ivory — "less than 200 grams" — and was "manufactured or handcrafted before July 6, 2016." The exception turns on both a **mass threshold** and a **manufacture-date cutoff**; an item must clear both, not either. (Necessary, not sufficient: the same guidance further requires that the ivory be worked rather than raw, comprise less than 50% of the item by both value and volume, and fall inside an import/removal window — imported before January 18, 1990, or removed from the wild before February 26, 1976.)

The 200-gram figure is what makes the exception matter for musical instruments rather than for ivory as a decorative material: the ivory content of a typical instrument is a trace inlay or fitting, not a solid mass. A violin bow tip-plate, for example, averages on the order of a quarter of a gram — hundreds of times below the ceiling. So most instruments carrying incidental ivory fall inside the de minimis window by weight, with the pre-2016 manufacture date doing the real gatekeeping work.

This is the **domestic sale** counterpart to the **international travel** rule captured in the [[claim-cites-musical-instrument-passport-certificate|CITES musical-instrument certificate]]: the certificate governs crossing borders; the de minimis exception governs whether an item can be sold at home. The two run on different dates (border travel keys on pre-February-26-1976 acquisition; domestic sale keys on pre-July-6-2016 manufacture), a distinction easy to blur and worth keeping separate.

The threshold and both dates are Tier-1, quoted directly from fws.gov; the ~0.25 g bow-tip figure is a Tier-3 illustration, not load-bearing. This note is `seedling` pending an independent re-read of the fws.gov guidance (blocked at promotion time). *Update 2026-07-10 (audit): the independent re-read landed — both quoted thresholds confirmed verbatim against fws.gov.*