Ok well now I'm totally confused, did I lose my BTG forever? Because --- I just imported my private key from my Mac which contained the "3" address and I imported the associated private key to my Dell PC Electrum wallet and created a new wallet through the standard set up and imported my private key.... now my private key that was on my Mac has a "1" address... but when I look up the "1" address the explorer doesn't return a result... but when I go back to view my "3" address I still see the BTG
Did I lose it forever since my new electrum wallet reassigned my private key to a "1" address?
No, you haven't lost it... the private key hasn't be "reassigned"... When you export a private key from Electrum for a "3" address... it doesn't get your ALL the private keys required to recreate that "3" address. Your wallet should say something like "2of3" or "2of2" or something like that in the title bar... The first number is the minimum number of signatures required to sign transactions... the 2nd number is the total number of private keys used to create the wallet.
So if you have "2of3", the wallet was originally created by merging 3 keys together... but you only need any 2 of these to sign a transaction. Depending on how the wallet was actually made will determine how many private keys are actually stored in your copy of the wallet... and whether or not you need private keys from other wallets to "co-sign" your transaction.
Do you remember how you setup the wallet? what xprvs, xpubs you used? or did you create a "two factor authentication" aka "2FA" wallet?
Hey - yes I have a 2FA wallet. I imported my private key to a new electrum wallet and now that private key is assigned a "1" address.. which doesn't display the amount of BTG I have available like my "3" address does.... since the private key is now assigned to a "1" address does this mean that I'll be able to recover the BTG since the private key is also associated with the 3 address or does this not work?
I'm sorry if this sounds confusing - I'm really just trying to make sense of it myself. Any help is appreciated - thank you so much!