What I've found is the lots vary. The stuff I used to get from my local gun shop was great. It was the GB 525 flat square box.
I have a funny story about this, actually. A couple of years ago at a plate shoot with 22s, another shooter there needed some ammo to run his 22, so I gave him some of my 525 box. Fine. Then a few weeks later we were at another one. He decided to "repay me" by taking golden bullet out of his wal mart value pack box and put it into mine on the picnic bench. Well... guess what... his little "ammo donation" basically contaminated my box of golden bullet. The ammo from his lot was loaded with duds! From that point onward I literally could not fire a single mag of the stuff without getting at least one fire failure every other mag!
On average it's usually not that bad..... but there are some lots of GB that were REALLY bad. It's kind of moot now because its almost hard to find the stuff.
-Mike