Friendly word of caution to dentists

We recently received a batch of waste crowns through our postal service from a dentist whose friend had recommended us to him. The batch of waste crowns immediately raised our suspicions when we started to conduct our non-destructive analytical testing upon them.

50% of the batch was completely non-precious.

Whilst it is not unusual to receive batches of waste crowns containing large amounts of both poor quality and non-precious crowns, this was a strange batch in the sense that there was no middle ground. Half of the materials were absolutely 100% non-precious.

Regardless, we proceeded with the valuation and offered the customer £240.00 

The customer informed us that he had been offered a considerable amount more than this by another company that he had posted the crowns into. (£300.00 to be exact) He had asked this company to send his waste crowns back to him as he felt they were worth more than than the £300.oo he had been offered.

This triggered alarm bells with us as we were well aware that the batch that the customer had sent in to us was not worth the money that he had been offered by the other company. In our professional opinion, a large number of precious crowns had been replaced with non-precious crowns prior to them being returned to the customer. Refining companies do not pay more for precious metals than the precious metals are actually worth. Common sense tells you that businesses do not work this way.

When we explained our concerns to the customer, he went on to reveal that he had previous issues with this same company. He had sent a batch of waste crowns in to the company last year and after disputing the price that they had offered, he asked for his waste crowns to be returned to him. He was then informed by the director of the company that this wouldn’t be possible as they had accidentally spilled his crowns onto a table and they had become mixed up with another batch of waste crowns.

This confirmed our suspicions. There are a lot of seemingly genuine companies within the refining industry using these kind of underhand tactics, there always has been and there always will be. It’s common knowledge within the trade. The problem with dental scrap, as opposed to hallmarked jewelry, is that you have no option other than to trust the integrity of your chosen refiner when seeking valuations.

After a bit of brainstorming, we have come up with a way that dentists can protect themselves to some extent. It’s not perfect and could be a little too time consuming for some, but we are talking hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of pounds worth of materials here. This could mean the difference between receiving £300 or receiving £600 for your waste crowns and bridges.

Before you send your waste crowns into any company, place them onto a worktop and take several photographs of them. Print these photographs off and enclose them with your scrap when you post them in to the refining company for analysis. It might sound ridiculous and you might not realistically be able to recognise each and every crown within your batch, but I can guarantee that it will make any less than professional refiner think twice about trying to make a disingenuous offer.

I’ll finish by saying that there are a lot of very good companies out there, all I can suggest is that you shop around online for reviews and other feedback before making your choice.