Ben Michael, Author at The Ring Finders

It’s been a while since I posted, so I figured I would at least let people know I’m still at it! I often get called from people asking if I’m still doing this, and I thought maybe it’s because my last post was from a few years ago.

It’s always interesting how the calls for lost rings come in waves. Lots of calls during beach season, then a slow period until leaf cleanup (!!), then again during snow shoveling season. Regardless of the case, I have the equipment and experience to help whatever the situation. Leave me a message and I’ll always get back to you. Usually with lots of questions:

• Where was the item lost (public or private area)
• If it’s not your property, do you have permission from the land owner to search the area?
• What is the size of the area? (pictures always help). This helps me estimate how much time we’ll need to try and locate the item. I don’t charge by the hour, but I won’t be comfortable coming out if I don’t think I have enough time to thoroughly search the whole area.
• What’s your availability?

I also get a lot of calls for rings lost indoors, inside vehicles, or even inside dumpsters! Unfortunately in those cases my eyes are as good as yours. Metal detectors are fairly useless in these situations, so you’re best off retracing your steps (which I can’t do!).

People also ask about fees up front. I don’t charge a fee to come out. I’m happy to help, but will gladly accept whatever you’re comfortable with whether the item is found or not. It all goes right into my daughter’s college fund!

If you’ve lost your ring or some other metal object, give me a call or text.  I charge nothing to come out, this is just a part of how I enjoy the hobby of metal detecting.  If the area is large or I’m unable to make it to your area, I’ll bring or call other experienced detectorists as I’m in a club with 70+ members all over Massachusetts and New Hampshire who would love to help when possible.

 

I haven’t been good about keeping my blog posts up to date. Since joining RingFinders I’ve recovered 19 of 24 rings (as of Jan 20, 2019) I’ve gone out to search for. Beaches in the summers, leaf piles in the fall, snow piles in the winter, angry spouses throwing rings, and everything in between.

 

My most recent find was a man who lost his ring while disposing of his Christmas tree in a brush pile. I spent 45-60 minutes detecting a small flattened area where the tree was dumped without finding the ring.  It was disappointing as the area was a bit small to have not found the ring, and the ground was frozen solid so it couldn’t have been underground. The owner called off the search as we had covered the area three times over, so I headed down the path he took through his back yard to dump the tree. I was swinging my detector along the way in case he had dropped it sooner than he thought. Just as I was about to switch off, I heard a high tone in my headphones and looked down and there was the ring sitting on the surface along the path. The owner couldn’t have been happier to return it back to his finger.

I was contacted by a couple who had recently been doing landscaping on a property and lost a gold women’s band with a number of diamonds somewhere on the property.  I met them both at the property and they showed me where they thought the item may have been lost.  They showed me a brush pile where they had been dumping some trimmings.  I had high hopes of finding it there as I’ve had good luck detecting brush piles in the past but unfortunately did not find the item there.  We then moved to an area in the yard where the woman was trimming some trees and I started to get some solid signals.  Unfortunately they were all a bit too deep to contain a ring that had just been lost, so we did not pursue them.  I detected a bit more around the tree and got a really clean sounding shallow signal.  I reached my pinpointer down over the target and it went off loud, indicating the item was very close to the surface.  I scraped off a thin layer of dirt and sure enough there it was.  The best part was the husband happened to be right next to me, watching as I uncovered the ring, and his wife was a few feet away looking in the brush pile.  He yelled to her « Got it!! », and that was a wrap.  They couldn’t have been happier, and after seeing the ring more closely I can see why.

 

They texted me some pictures afterwards along with a nice note:

 

Thank you very much once again.  You totally made our day, our week, our Christmas, our entire year!!!  We cant thank you enough!!!!

 

Hands down my favorite recovery so far!!