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My London-based granny absolutely used to love her gold bridge work as well as caps. She used to say this made her look prosperous. Although it did faintly remind me of Captain Blackbeard the pirate whenever she grinned! Well she passed on recently and bequeathed me a whole dresser drawer full of her old junky old bridge work! Initially, I had serious thought of excavating the old dame and burying the stuff with her but what the hell, eventually carted the whole stuff (with the dresser drawer) to the dentist ( no way I was going to touch that stuff with my bare hands!)Imagine my everlasting surprise when the dentist recommended I haul my little gold mine to the local goldsmith for a return on the gold in the bridge work. Although I’m the eternal skeptic, I was goggle brained when the goldsmith offered me a whopping several hundred pounds for the entire mess!
That’s right people with the price of gold now touching the sky around £600 per ounce; the price of reclaimed gold from fillings, crowns and cap has really touched the sky. Gold crowns, fillings and bridgework are preferably made of 16-karat gold, which is alloyed with special metal like silver, zinc and copper. These alloys are responsible for making gold dental work soft enough for the dental technician to work with but hard enough to hold pressure during biting. A single gold crown is usually made with one-tenth of an ounce of 16-karat gold, which can cost around £40 to £50. Much heavier pieces like the ones which I hauled to the goldsmith can cost mush higher! So go ahead get your old dental pieces to the dentist for an evaluation. You never know what you could get for them!