I was making a second pass-by of an enclosed glass case at auction this week when I stopped in my tracks. There, on the bottom shelf were what looked like dentures (or false teeth) in a gallon ziplock bag.
That couldn’t be right, I thought to myself. So, I slid open the glass door, reached in and lifted out the plastic bag. Inside were 25 to 30 partial dentures attached to metal the color of silver. There may have been more than that, but I I wasn’t about to take them out to count them.
I still couldn’t believe it. Partial dentures ready to be auctioned off? In a time where you can get Dental Implants in Washington Heights and all over the world, who would want them? Nearby sat one of the auctioneers. Teeth? I said. Who auctions off teeth? “Wait till you see how much they go for?” he said.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since gold and silver are at an all-time high. Gold is selling for more than $1,200 a troy ounce. Emerging nations and investors are buying it, according to a story today in USAToday, and foreign countries with large preserves are parking it. For good reason: Gold has jumped 36 percent over the last year. One analyst, however, did not recommend holding on to it for the long term: You can only make money on gold in times of crisis, he said.
Like now. We’ve all seen the full-page newspaper ads from companies wanting to buy your gold at what they call great prices. They’re the ones making money in times of crisis. About a year ago, I sold some old thin gold necklaces I hadn’t worn in years at one of those Tupper-ware type parties at a friend’s art gallery. She was getting a cut of the proceeds.
As for silver, it is selling for about $19 a troy ounce, and the demand has been growing over the last year or so. One story on the optionsinsider.com website noted that foreign nations leery of the euro and worried about the debt situation in countries like Greece are investing in precious metals like gold and silver.
The current price of gold or silver is always the push-button enticement that auctioneers use to get dawdling bidders to bid high on gold or sterling silver jewelry, teapots, silverware, coffeepots or other such items. “You can melt it down for the gold (or the silver),” they like to say.
That’s what someone apparently had in mind for all the metal on those partial dentures. And there were lots of it. When I mentioned the dentures to another auctioneer, he recounted a story of how the owner of this auction house had given him the job of removing gold from dentures. He had to crack the dentures to extract the gold – a very unpleasant experience, he remembered, grimacing. Extracting gold from teeth always reminds me of reading about how the Nazis removed gold teeth and fillings from Jewish Holocaust victims at the concentration camps. The thought always makes me queasy.
When the partial dentures came up for auction, the auctioneer noted that he wasn’t sure if the metal was gold or silver (it was the color of silver, which doesn’t mean it actually was that metal) and that the dentures were selling “as is.”
There were two bidders. The bag of false teeth sold for $15. This buyer may have just gotten lucky – or not.
