This study compared the marginal leakage of cast gold complete crowns cemented with glass ionomer and with zinc phosphate cement. The effect of polishing the preparations and conditioning with polyacrylic acid was also evaluated for glass ionomer cement. The cast gold crowns cemented with glass ionomer cement demonstrated significantly lower marginal leakage than did those with zinc phosphate cement. The extent of microleakage was not substantially different between crowns when the preparations were polished and conditioned with polyacrylic acid.