Wedding ring lost in Oregon basement, recovered with some teamwork

I received a message from Sam, saying he had found me on theringfinders.com, asking if I was available for a call to explain his circumstances regarding his lost ring.

He told me that over a month ago, he had been going up the stairs from his basement and felt his gold wedding ring slip off his finger. He heard it hit the concrete floor, roll a bit, then it gone. He had searched through the miscellaneous boxes that were stored under the stairs, purchased a pinpointer and cheap “snake camera” from Amazon, but hadn’t found the ring.

I explained the difficulty of metal detecting inside a house, but told him I would bring a few different tools and try my best to find the ring.

We set up a time for me to meet him at his home in Portland. I loaded the search tools I thought would be useful (bright flashlight, Manticore, pinpointer with a discrimination mode, and my ring simulations).

Meeting Sam, he walked me through how he lost his ring. I started with the pinpointer under the stairs, finding only nails. I used my endoscope camera to look into the cracks and gaps in the concrete floor, and nothing. I pushed out the search area, looking under the furnace, water heater, and a freezer. Zip.

Pretty discouraged, I went through the details again with Sam. Based on his confidence, I dropped one of my copper rings simulators onto the stairs. Three out of five times, it rolled towards a gap in the concrete below the stairs. My pinpointer hardly fit into the hole, and the signal I heard was questionable. I ran the camera in and saw a slight reflection. Moving it around, there was a definite gold shine in the dirt. I could get one finger into the hole, and could definitely tell it was the ring, but couldn’t get it out.
Sam was searching with his Amazon detector under the stairs and saw me focused on the hole in the concrete. I told him I had his ring, but couldn’t get it out of the hole. He was able to use a set of chopsticks to extract the ring from it’s hiding place.

Persistence pays off, and a ring found.