My gold crown came out. The dentist said there wasn’t enough tooth to glue it back on. And it is no big deal because the tooth doesn’t have another tooth below it, so it didn’t have a job (chewing). So, I know the price of gold per ounce, but this is an alloy. Not pure gold. It is a full molar crown. Any idea what I can get for it?
I’ve sold in the past. They said it was 18k. Animated-teeth.com has some information. You need to know the weight in grams and the purity. A “we buy gold” store may be easiest, but not the best price, for you anyway.
Here is one previous thread. Samclem mentions that if it’s white in color, it’s not gold and not salable.
To repeat my post from the linked thread:
I have sent a number of old crowns to Garfield Refining in Philadelphia, who were recommended by my dentist. They’re a well established company with a good reputation. I got a fair price with quick turnaround.
They’ll assay the crown for you. You can contact them to get a mailing envelope and form to fill out if you’d like.
Dentist here. Haven’t cast my own crowns for patients since dental school but then we were using about 12K gold. 18K would be too soft. Back then about $10-$15 of gold in a crown. Now with higher prices I’d guess $40-$50, depends a lot on the size of the crown.
As Gary T mentioned, I use Garfield refining for myself and think they are a good outfit. They will take any scrap you have dental, old jewelry, grandma’s tea set.
I’ve sent one in and taken another to the local coin shop. Unless the second one had a higher percentage of gold, the coin shop paid better. (The second one wasn’t mine and was a good bit older.)
Might have, crowns very a bit depending on if they are noble or high noble alloy plus different brand /labs may be different. Older ones sometimes were about 60% gold now many are 45-50%. Bigger factor though is size of crown and how much tooth structure is being replaced. A small premolar with about a millimeter of reduction v. a first molar with one and a half millimeters of reduction the molar could be three times or more the weight of the premolar.
Garfield asseys and weighs your gold takes 5% off the spot price and sends you the rest. I can’t imagine a coin shop would do as well. Obviously YMMV.