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I am a dentist and have some old gold crowns that I have recently taken out of patients mouths. At what point does it become profitable to send them in for refining.  Do I need to have 20-30 crowns before it makes sense? — Dr. Norton

It can be hard to judge how much precious metal is in dental gold scrap because so many different alloys are used in the industry. Typically dental gold alloys range in the 10 to 22 karat range with 16 karat gold being the most common.  A 10 karat crown would have 41.6% gold while a 22 karat crown would have 91.5% so there can be a big difference in value even for two crowns of the exact same weight.

Dentists also use a lot of silver-colored alloys for crowns and bridges that can have high precious metal content.   Despite their color, they may have a fairly sizeable proportion of gold or be made with other precious metals like platinum or palladium.  Unfortunately, without testing equipment, it is often difficult to tell the difference between these precious alloys and other “white” alloys that have no scrap value whatsoever.

Of course, the price of gold on the day your gold crowns are received for refining will also impact the value.

The last major variable is who you are going to sell  the scrap dental gold to.  If you sell it to the same company that is supplying you with other dental products, then they are probably just going to take a cut and pass the crowns to a precious metal refiner.    However, if you only have one or two, they may batch it with crowns and bridges from other dentists as many refiners will not accept small quantities.
If you work with us at Arch Enterprises, you do not need a minimum quantity of dental gold to receive payment. We will evaluate your items and pay you based on the weight and quality of the gold in the crowns. We have analytic equipment that can evaluate each piece individually for the gold, silver, platinum and palladium content. We pay 85% of the metal value back to you in a check in 2-3 business days.  We are endorsed by dental associations and have worked regularly with many dentists.

If you need some basic guidelines, let’s assume that the average crown weighs 2.5 grams or about .08 troy ounces (the value in which gold is traded) and that the price for the day is $1,000 per troy ounce.  Based on this, a

• A 2.5 gram crown made of 10 karat alloy (41.6% gold) would be worth (.08 x.416 x 1,000) or $33.28 before refining costs of approximately 15%
• A 2.5 gram crown made of 16 karat alloy (66.6% gold) would be worth (.08 x.666 x 1,000) or $53.28 before refining costs of approximately 15%
• A 2.5 gram crown made of 22 karat alloy (91.5% gold) would be worth (.08 x.915 x 1,000) or $73.28 before refining costs of approximately 15%

As one of the largest silver refiners in the U.S., we process thousands of different silver items every year.  One of the most common is silver flatware.  In today’s less formal world, many of you apparently just don’t have a need for that set of sterling you inherited or those silver candlestick holders you got as a wedding gift years ago.  Check out this video where we explain some of the issues related to valuing silver flatware and weighted items.

I have a 14 karat gold ring that weighs 0.3 ounces on my postal scale. Can you tell me what the value of gold in this ring is and what I should expect to get for it from a refiner? – Bob in Columbia, MO

To determine the value of gold in your 14K gold ring, there are a few issues to consider:

• Weight – Unfortunately postal scales are not accurate enough when one is considering the valuing of a gold item, but in this case, we measured the ring that you sent in and found it to actually did weigh 8 grams or 0.2822 ounces.

• Percentage of Gold – 14K Gold is supposed to contain 58.24% gold while the rest is typically made up of copper, zinc, nickel, and other metals.  We ran your ring through our X-Ray analyzer and found that it actually contained 66.89% gold.  See Video Clip.

• Price of Gold – On July 22, the price of gold closed at $951.42 per ounce.  Keep in mind that gold is valued in troy ounces and Americans typically think of an ounce as what is termed a avoirdupois ounce.  Troy ounces actually weigh a little more than avoirdupois ounces so you actually have less than .2822 troy ounces of gold.  To get your value in troy ounces, you would actually have to multiply .2822 avoirdupois ounces by .912.

So, the amount of pure gold in your particular 14K gold ring weighing .2822 avoirdupois ounces with a gold percentage of 66.89% was 0.18877 ounces.  To figure out its value in troy ounces, we mulitplied this number by .912 to get 0.172 Troy Ounces.  Mulitplying this by today’s rate for gold of $951.52 and your gold is worth $163.79.

Of course, the refiner needs to melt this into a form that someone wants and make a profit so you should expect anywhere from 70% to 90% of this value from a refiner.  Most refiners won’t deal in quantities this low.  At Arch Enterprises, we do, but we pay on a scale that ranges from 80% for those who send in less than 1 ounce of pure gold to over 90% for those sending in over 2 ounces.

My husband and I own a jewelry and watch repair store and for years have been saving the spent watch batteries for recycling. We understand there is some silver content in many of these batteries, but mainly we just want to know that they are recycled. What can we do with these? – Gwen in Memphis, TN

Refiner Response – Gwen, it is admirable of you to consider the environment when thinking of how to dispose of these spent watch batteries. Many watch batteries are actually referred to in the industry as “silver oxide batteries” and as the name implies, they contain a small amount of silver. Most precious metal refiners are not going to be too excited about recycling these unless you have hundreds of pounds of them. Since we at Arch Metal Refining process so much silver, we are able to pay out approximately $10 to $15 per pound depending on the quality and quantity of batteries you have to refine. Obviously, the primary benefit is knowing that these batteries are being recycled and disposed of properly, but the fact that you can make a little money on them can be an added bonus.

This is probably the most common question that we get here at the Silver & Gold Refining Blog.

There are obviously a lot of companies advertising on TV offering “Top dollar for one’s gold”, but the reality is that gold is a worldwide commodity with a price that fluctuates by the minute and is posted by the commodities exchanges.

Realistically, no refiner is going to pay more than the gold is worth on the open market because the gold has a strict value which can be calculated using the following formula.

Weight  x  Purity  x  Price of Gold

There are, however, a few issues to consider:

• The price of gold is set in Troy Ounces which are heavier than what most of us in the U.S. consider an ounce (the avoirdupois ounce). So, if you measure your gold in standard ounces, you need to multiply your weight in ounces by 0.91145833 to get the weight in Troy ounces.
• How accurate is your scale? If gold is trading for $900 an ounce, refiners like us are not going to place your items on a postal scale and round up to the nearest ounce. We typically measure using sophisticated scales that measure in 1/100th of a gram increments.
• Purities vary. While most minted items are very accurate, jewelry marked as 14K gold may actually contain more or less than the 58.24% gold that it takes to classify as 14K. One can typically only tell this with very sophisticated testing equipment, but it is a consideration nonetheless.
• The price of gold fluctuates constantly during the trading day.

Based on this, people can often get very different values, but the formula should get you close.  The bigger difference comes in what the refiner, broker, jeweler, or other gold buyer pays out as your percentage.  Regardless of whom you sell your gold to, this person/company takes some risk in that the price of gold fluctuates by the minute so gold buyers often have to build in some profit to ensure they don’t lose money caused by these fluctuations.

Base on our research, the companies that spend millions of dollars advertising on TV or that travel across the country renting hotel suites and advertising gold buying events in the local paper need to make huge margins to cover their advertising expenses so they typically pay back about 1/6 to 1/2 the value of the gold and keep the rest to cover their marketing costs and make a profit.

In fact, since many of them are not even precious metal refiners, they have to pay a gold refining company to convert items like broken jewelry and such into gold bullion that can be sold on the open market.

Because of these low returns and the shady nature of many of these aggressive companies, people often recommend going to a local jeweler or coin shop that you can trust.  While these companies are not refiners, they typically have relationships with gold refiners and will often pay 1/2 to 2/3 the value of your gold as they have less invested in marketing.

As one would imagine, the best opportunity to get the most return on your gold is to work directly with a gold refiner.  These are the companies that actually melt your gold into bars and such so it can be sold to industry or minted and sold to investors.  Gold refiners typically pay out about 85% to 90% of the value of your gold although many don’t deal with small consumer transactions so you have to look around to find those that will deal in small quantities unless you plan on going into business hosting your own gold buying parties.