Gone are the good old days of lost tooth lore when all that children wanted in exchange for their lost baby tooth was a healthy permanent tooth.
Nowadays, kids are demanding more and more from the tooth fairy.
Many parents want to know how much the tooth fairy pays. Personally, I’m not sure that it’s really the business of parents to know what goes on between the tooth fairy and their children, but what do I know?
For all those curious parents out there, here’s how much the tooth fairy has paid out over the last six years.
How Much Does the Tooth Fairy Pay Per Tooth?
I came across a wide variety of figures while researching the amount that the tooth fairy pays. I found this tooth fairy poll website that aims to track the current going rate for lost baby teeth as well as an article in Money Magazine from 2005. The article pegged the value of one lost baby tooth at $1.78.
The most comprehensive tooth fairy payout statistics, however, are available from Delta Dental of Minnesota. They seem to have a passion for finding out how much the tooth fairy pays. They go to great lengths to figure out the national average (as well as the Minnesota average) for tooth fairy payouts.
Here’s a summary of Delta Dental of Minnesota’s annual tooth fairy reports with a graph displaying the average price that the tooth fairy has paid per tooth over the last six years:
- The 2011 report said that the tooth fairy quotecorner.com/online-pharmacy.html paid $2.52. per tooth.
- The 2010 report said that the tooth fairy paid $2.13 per tooth.
- The 2009 report said that the tooth fairy paid $1.88 per tooth.
- The 2008 report said that the tooth fairy paid $2.09 per tooth.
- The 2007 report said that the tooth fairy paid $1.71 per tooth.
- The 2006 report said that the tooth fairy paid $2.00 per tooth.
As you can see, the values are steadily rising, which is good news for the children!
On a side note, the high rate of return (around 10% since 2005) causes me to think that baby teeth might be a good investment, especially when you take into account the fact that the U.S. credit rating was recently downgraded.
Should Children Be Able to Bank Their Teeth?
While researching for this article, I came across an interesting option the tooth fairy apparently offers. Some parents supposedly encourage their children to save up multiple lost teeth and then the child can cash them all in at once. By saving the teeth and then putting them all under their pillow at once, the tooth fairy gives them more for the teeth collectively than the good fairy would have given for each individual tooth.
Perhaps this helps children learn to save, or perhaps the tooth fairy is slowing down with old age and appreciates saving a trip. Either way, I’d never thought about doing this with my own kids. I’m still undecided, but I think I prefer the original system. After all, having to save up teeth might kill some of the excitement by not allowing each child to get their 20 tooth fairy visits.
How Much Does The Tooth Fairy Pay Per Tooth At Your House?
How much does the tooth fairy pay when she visits your children? Do your kids save up their teeth to get a larger payout from the tooth fairy? Does the tooth fairy pay more for teeth that have never had cavities? Do you have a child with a double tooth, an extra tooth, or congenitally missing teeth? If so, how does the tooth fairy account for those anomalies?
I’d love to hear what the tooth fairy does at your house. Thanks for reading!
The Tooth Fairy gives 2 gold dollars 2 dollar bills and a dollar(give or take a few nickels and dimes) worth of change. With a few exceptions of course. the last tooth being one. 20 bucks for the last baby tooth. A tooth that needs encouraging will sometimes get payment or prizes, but that’s from us not the Tooth Fairy.
My little brother was so bothered seeing one of my daughter’s teeth(top front) turned around backwards that he offered her 20 dollars if he could just touch it. It fell out when he touched, he swears he didn’t even wiggle it, lol. He gave her the 20 and coddled her even more than he normally did for several days afterward.
Kids are so funny about money sometimes. My son recently had one pulled from his mouth(the shark tooth article) and we gave him a 5 dollar bill and a handful of change. He got extremely excited over the five dollar bill, even though he’s always received at least 5 dollars in gold dollars, change and 1’s.
There are 5 years between my kids and my daughter doesn’t really remember it but she only got 3 dollars for most of hers. 1 dollar bill, a gold dollar and handful of change. I am not sure what year it was we started with 5. I think 3-4 years ago.
Hi Heidi – Thanks for sharing – That’s cool that you make it exciting for your kids. Gold dollars sound fun, I wish my tooth fairy had’ve given me some gold coins!
Good stuff, Tom! The tooth fairy used to give my kids a $1 Sacajawea “gold” coin for every cuspid, bicuspid, and incisor and 2 $1 coins for molars. Like Heidi, both my kids got bigger payouts for the last tooth — although it was only $5 in my house. Extrapolating from the data you presented, I’m happy to see that I — oops, I mean the Tooth Fairy — was at least in the vicinity of the ballpark on the payouts. 😉
All the best,
Len
Len Penzo dot Com
Hi Len – Thanks for your comment! I don’t think I was able to get any extra money from the tooth fairy from my last tooth, but it’s not a bad idea.
As a parent I got an interesting situation where my son needed to have his impacted wisdom teeth out and there ended up to be 6! Now, he is old enough to get the Tooth Fairy idea….question is how much is the trauma, extra teeth and difficulty worth these day? In our home it will be worth something, just on the fence of how much…$5…$10 each?…hmmm any thought?
We gave our 4 year old $2 when she lost her first tooth last week. We also included a certificate from the tooth fairy, a letter from the tooth fairy explaining how important it is to take care of her teeth – even more so now because these are the ones she’ll have the rest of her life and a tooth fairy coloring sheet. She loved it all!
Thanks for your comment – I love the certificate and letter on the importance of taking care of your teeth!
Kids need a tooth index to protect themselves from lowballing tooth fairies. They do not all offer the same price for teeth. Like the real World where there are good business people and bad. Your index, protects the less informed and gives them a benchmark to Guide them. If kids are not getting at least the index price for their finite lost teeth, they can speak to their parents, who can put pressure on the Tooth Fairy to up the exchange price on the next lost tooth.
Hi, our children (twins, Tobias and Simon) are 5 months old and struggling with teething. But we are looking forward to get rid of those first teeth, that hurt so much at the moment 😉 Still, there´s nothing to see…
We won´t encourage Tooth fairy to give them money for their teeth. Maybe she can give them some small books or small toys in exchange for the teeth? What do you think?
I have lost a tooth today 23/10/15 it looks like it has a bit of silver who knows how much that’s worth?
When I was 9 or 10 I was supposed to have a tooth pulled, but after looking at it closer they decided against it. When I left the dentist gave me three dollars since the tooth fairy wouldn’t be visiting that night!