I have two dental crowns, two gold molars made of mixed metal, according to my dentist. He said metal refiners buy such things and break them down into their separate metals. Do you do that? Thanks from Brett in Milwaukee, WI.

Hi Brett,

Yes! As a precious metal refiner we have the capabilities to recover gold from the dental items you have described. Since dental gold is not hallmarked like gold jewelry (14k, 18k etc), you need to make sure that your buyer has the ability to find the exact purity of your items, as dental gold can really vary in purity. We have seen dental gold to be as high as 85% gold, while other times it can be as low as 15%. However, most of the dental gold we see is about 12k, which is 66.66% gold. We run tests with an XRF analytical machine to determine how much gold is available to refine. An at home gold kit may not suffice to give accurate results for the purity of dental gold.

Our next-step advice for you is to make sure that your items are as separated from other non-precious metals and materials and you can get them, then weight on a postal scale. You can refer to our payout schedule for gold, but note that these percentages are based on the actual gold content (not the total weight of your items).

You can refer to our Dental Gold category for more posts about refining dental gold. Thanks for your question Brett!