How much is the gold in your mouth worth?

Gold is used in dentistry as caps, crowns, and fillings. While crowns and caps are fairly light and hence don't amount to a lot of gold, solid gold teeth are constructed out of gold alloys that contain close to 66% gold in them (16k gold) and are approximately 3 grams in weight each.

In hip hop culture, a grill is a type of jewellery worn over your teeth. The grills are made of precious metals in the shape of your teeth using a silicon die. Grills are generally removable, starting as a fashion trend among artists in New York in the 1980s and gaining popularity. Almost all applications of dental gold require the use of 16k gold (66% pure). Gold any purer than that would be too soft and would deform due to the heavy pressures of chewing.

Whether you’re a hip-hop artist or just another person with some gold crowns in your teeth, the gold in your mouth is definitely worth a pretty penny. The price of 1 gram of 16k gold is approximately INR 1700 (rate as of July 2017), so it begs to question, how much is the gold in your mouth worth.

Assuming a grill for all 32 teeth in your mouth, with each grill being 3 grams in weight, you would have 96g of 16k gold in your mouth. At the given rate of INR 1700 per 16k gram of gold, the gold in your mouth is worth INR 1,63,000. This could buy a return ticket to the USA, or five iPhone 6 or a couple of 60-inch LCD TVs for your house!