Dental Platinum Scrap: The “Other” Kind of Dental Scrap You Should Know About
If you have experience recycling and profiting from precious metals, chances are you have some familiarity with dental scrap. In years past (and less often during about the last 25 years), gold was often used to make fillings, caps, and even larger gold bars that were used to make bridges that were installed in patients’ mouths. Also in years past, it was common practice for dentists and dental labs to keep used gold items and, when they got around to it, to have those pieces of gold dental scrap recycled.
Another part of the history of gold dental scrap is that dentists often returned pieces of gold scrap to their patients. If a chunk of gold cane from a patient’s mouth, after all, that piece of gold belonged to the patient, not to the dentist who happened to remove or replace it. Ethical dentists would either return the gold to the patient who had “worn” it or pay for it.
But What about Platinum Dental Scrap?
When you hear the term “platinum dental scrap,” chances are pretty good you will say, “That doesn’t exist, does it?” And if that is your response, you are smart, because few people have ever heard of it.
But here’s the wrinkle. Platinum really was used to make dental appliances in the past. The confusion occurs because it was most often used in an alloy that was referred to as . . .
White Gold
Now, you have heard of white gold, right? You have seen white gold watch cases, white gold wedding rings. You might even have come across some dental scrap that was made of white gold. But what you might not have realized was that the white gold you were looking at could have been an alloy that contained platinum. Therefore . . . platinum dental scrap.
Does All White Gold Dental Scrap Contain Platinum?
Not all of it does, only some. In most cases, white gold dental scrap is really one of these three things:
An alloy that contains both gold and platinum. This is the most valuable kind of white gold dental scrap. How much gold and platinum are contained in these alloys? It depends, because there is no standard formulation. But no matter the percentages – and no matter the karat rating of the gold that results – this kind of dental scrap, if you can find it, is valuable, and well worth sending to us for recycling.
An alloy of silver and platinum, or even silver and palladium. It is strange that this alloy is referred to as “white gold,” when it doesn’t contain any gold. But it looks like white gold, and if it contains palladium, it is well worth recycling.
Titanium, silver, steel and other non-gold metals and alloys. Again, these may be white, but they are certainly not white gold.
How Can You Know If Your White-Colored Dental Scrap Contains Platinum?
Call our precious metals recycling consultants today at 800-426-2344 and we will explain how easy it is to have us test your dental scrap and extract the gold, platinum, and other precious metals it contains.
Let us take the mystery out of making money recycling dental scrap. Give us a call today.