As part of Cora Refining’s commitment to provide our clients with a superior dental refining experience, we periodically answer some of the most common questions we hear from our clients.
Can We Ship Our Scrap Via Mail?
We have noticed that some people feel more secure sending their dental scrap via the Postal Service. Yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to send it that way. However, we prefer our clients use FedEx for several reasons.
- Every shipment has a tracking number – If there are any delays, we can easily find out the status of the shipment
- We’ve shipped with FedEx for nearly 20 years. In all that time among thousands of shipments, FedEx has lost only 2 packages (both of which were fully covered by insurance).
- We have third party coverage on FedEx shipments up to $25,000.
- It’s convenient. We can easily create a FedEx label and email it to you at any time.
Can I Send A Single Crown For Refining?
Although we can no longer pay for the shipping costs or shipping supplies for a single crown, we will still accept them for processing. The cost to ship and process a single crown has risen over the years while the alloys used on crowns have steadily decreased in value. So, paying for the shipping is no longer a viable option for us.
If you are sending a single crown, please be sure to put it inside a padded envelope (mail machines will literally punch a crown out and the empty envelope will arrive at our refinery with a crown-sized hole).
Why Don’t You Give Estimates?
We test all of the dental scrap that arrives at our office. There is such a wide range of materials and alloys used in dentistry today that look very similar to the eye. Trying to distinguish between nickel, chrome, cobalt, palladium, and silver (or any combination of these alloys) by their appearance is impossible to do with any degree of accuracy. Needless to say, the difference in value of a nickel/chrome alloy is significant compared to a palladium/silver alloy.
Consider for a moment, a sales representative from a precious metal scrap refiner walks into your office and offers to pay you on the spot for the crown and bridges you’ve collected. You know that it is impossible for the sales representative to know the value of your scrap just by sight. Let’s say he offers you $400 cash for your scrap. Sounds appealing right?
But also consider that the refiner doesn’t want to lose money on this transaction and he doesn’t know whether your scrap is mostly palladium or nickel/chrome or cobalt or even titanium. His offer will be very low to compensate for the risk he is taking.
That is precisely why we don’t give estimates. It’s not a good policy for either party. No matter what refiner you use, always make sure you’re scrap is tested.
Do you have other questions that we haven’t covered here? Send us an email info@corarefining.com or give us a call (800-844-2040).