How much is dental gold worth? What sellers should know

That old gold dental crown sitting in a drawer may not be useful anymore, but it might still have value. The tricky part is that just looking at the color or condition won’t tell you how much gold is actually present, or what you’d get for selling that gold.

How much dental gold is worth depends on many factors, such as the materials used in the restoration and current precious metal prices. In this article, we’ll explain how to estimate what your gold may be worth and who might want to buy it.

What’s dental gold worth? 

Dental gold doesn’t have a fixed price, since materials and construction vary widely. Gold crowns and bridges are made from alloys, because pure 24K gold is too soft to support safe biting and chewing. Depending on the restoration method and where the work is done, a dental alloy may contain gold alongside metals like palladium, platinum, silver, nickel, and/or chromium. 

So it can be challenging to figure out how much one gram of dental gold is worth. A gold-rich alloy can contain substantially more valuable metal than a crown of the same weight that’s made mostly from base metals. 

Dental alloys are often grouped as high noble, noble, or non-noble based on their precious metal content: 

• High noble alloys contain at least 60% precious metal, most often gold.
• Noble alloys contain at least 25% precious metal. 
• Non-noble alloys contain less than 25% precious metal. 

Note that while some crowns are made primarily from metal, porcelain-fused-to-metal restorations use a metal substructure underneath a ceramic exterior. This means that even if you know what alloy was used, the visible size or total weight of the crown may not match the amount of precious metal a refiner can recover as scrap. 

For bridges, a larger restoration may contain more recoverable metal than a single crown. But size alone still doesn’t establish value, because a bridge can also include different proportions of porcelain, cement, and base-metal alloy. 

The original dental bill isn’t a useful resale benchmark either. That price covered professional treatment, lab work, fabrication, and other clinical costs. Once the restoration has been removed, buyers are primarily interested in the recoverable metals.

Key elements that determine dental gold’s value

To estimate how much your gold tooth or other dental gold may sell for, you’ll need to know:

• The alloy’s precious metal content: Dental restorations can contain very different proportions of gold, alongside other metals like platinum and silver that may contribute additional value. Testing is often needed, since crowns also usually aren’t stamped with a usable karat mark.
• The recoverable metal weight: A scale may show the weight of the entire restoration, including porcelain and other non-metal materials. Buyers and refiners are interested in the metal they can actually recover, so that portion needs to be separated from the rest of the piece when determining value. 
• Current precious metal prices: Silver, platinum, palladium, and gold prices change with the market. So an old estimate may no longer reflect what a dental crown is worth today. 
• Testing and refining costs: Some buyers use x-ray fluorescence testing to identify metals in the alloy, while refiners may melt and assay the material for a more exact breakdown of recoverable precious metals. Those processes carry costs that can affect the final offer. 
• The amount of material being sold: A single crown may be more difficult to sell for a good price than a larger group of crowns, bridges, or other dental scrap. Specialized refiners are often best equipped to process mixed dental alloys in quantity.

How to sell dental gold

If you just had a crown or bridge removed, ask the dental office to return it to you. Once you have the piece, here are some of the places that will buy dental gold. 

A specialized dental or precious metal refiner

Refiners generally have the equipment and knowledge to evaluate crowns, bridges, and mixed dental alloys, including restorations with porcelain. This can be useful when you don’t know a piece’s composition, so it may contain metals like palladium and silver in addition to gold. 

A local gold buyer or pawn shop

A local transaction with a pawn shop or independent gold buyer can be convenient for selling a single piece. Ask how the buyer tests dental material, and find out whether the offer includes precious metals other than gold.

An online precious metal or jewelry buyer

Online buyers give you a convenient way to compare offers, and they may provide dental gold value calculators you can use. Be sure to verify what items the company accepts, how it verifies dental material, what its fees and shipping protections are, and which precious metals it pays for. 

Get a free appraisal for your dental gold with Unvault

If you know or can reasonably estimate your dental restoration’s gold purity and metal weight, you can use our Gold Melt Value Calculator to get an idea for what it might be worth. The calculator will combine the karat and weight with the current gold spot price to estimate the value of the gold content.

If you don’t know those details, a free online appraisal can give you a clearer starting point. With Unvault, you can upload photos and a description for a free, no-obligation valuation. If you decide to sell afterward, you can review how our transparent process works before sending anything in. 

Get an instant gold valuation with Unvault.