Constantine Hatzis, Author at The Ring Finders

Student Initiation lost signet ring recovered.

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I was contacted over the weekend by a student who had just started university.

From what I understand there was some sort of initiation process going on in the beautiful park nearby, which overlooks Oxford, with an amazing view of many of the spires of the university.

This initiation took the form of rolling down a mild slope of the park, with possibly some sort of inebriation involved? also being dark, what could go wrong?

So we arranged to meet in the park for a search. Luckily the grass hadn’t been cut, but in a few more days, this would have been on the cards.

The area to be searched was probably about 500 square meters, so I set about searching. There were many very nice signals going on which were all sub surface, so had to be ignored! Eventually, quite near my last corner marker, a beautiful clear tone, then there it was, a very nice engraved signet ring recovery in some getting long grass.

Very happy student, and detectorist!

 

 

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Don’t throw it!

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I was contacted a short while back by an upset husband who unfortunately had a kind of disagreement with his wife.

Sadly the beautiful diamond wedding ring was drawn into this disagreement, was sent airborne into some very thick bushes of their back garden.

This was a challenging search, due to the thick vegetation about, but thankfully I had remembered my trusty secateurs to help clear the worst bits.

But after probably two hours of searching, and some interesting old die cast model cars etc, a lovey clean ‘lost, but found ring tone’ was emitted from my detector.

I think all three of them were very happy to be reunited once again.

 

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Lost ring recovered from dog walk

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I had a call the other day from a lady who had lost her grandmothers wedding ring. Her grandmother was married in 1950, so this was a very special ring.

We met on her dog walk, which was a wooded track with lots of undergrowth each side. the walk was probably quarter of a mile, so quite a search. The track was surprisingly not too trashy, but as with most ring searches, they are normally on the surface, so a detuned detector was necessary.

After nearly two hours of searching, we were nearing the end of the track, and we were both beginning to feel the hope of finding the ring was fading. But then, a beautiful clear tone was delivered! A quick brush aside with my foot of some leaf litter, and there it was, a very nice gold ring smiling at me.

Another very happy and emotional owner of a very special lost ring now recovered.

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Lost Ring Recovered in Cirencester

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I had a call the other day from a chap called Adam.

He lost his Grandfathers gold ring in his very large garden while entertaining guests. The ring was of great sentimental value, as Adam has the same initials, and name as his late grandfather. It is also set with a diamond. The ring had been lost for about a month, and since then, the grass had been cut a few times which was a bit worrying, as it may well have been badly damaged, with a missing diamond, or even lost in the green waste bin!

Thankfully after a relatively short time, and a lovely clear signal that you get from gold, the valuable heirloom ring had been recovered.

 

 

 

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Lost denture recovered in Princes Risborough

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Sometimes the slightly odd request comes along!

I had a call from a chap who was slightly embarrassed, but asked if I could search for his lost denture? I said as long as there was some metal, I could probably detect it.

He said he lost it while talking to his friend from his apartment window, and out it flew!…..this I found amusing and had to apologise for laughing a bit.

We agreed a time, and I set off.

I arrived and was greeted by the chap, there was a distinct gap in his smile, but not a very big gap. So this was quite a small denture I was looking for, with probably not much metal for a good signal.

I chose my smallest high frequency coil, which was necessary, as said denture had been lost in a dense bush.

This was quite a  challenging search, as it was also a very trashy location, lots of bottle tops, drainage and other utilities in close proximity, but with a de-tuned , this made things a little easier.

Thankfully after about 45 minutes, and not a bad signal the denture was re united with its very happy owner!

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Grandfather’s lost ring found

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I had a call the other day from a young man who lost his grandfather’s ring while throwing a ball about in his garden. It was definitely around as he heard it bounce as it landed.  The question was which garden had it landed in? It was either their garden or nextdoor. After a thorough search in their garden including a pile of grass clippings that had unfortunately been contaminated with a few dog « lumps »….(the owner very kindly removed them), I decided to search nextdoor, with the permission of the owner of course. This garden was a complete contrast to the very tidy garden I had just searched. It was very overgrown, there was old furniture, broken jars and pots all over the place, and generally a disaster of a garden. This made it quite difficult to search, even with a 5 inch coil. It was time to use my pinpointer. After about half an hour or so I hit my target, a slightly deformed and worn signet ring. Another great recovery for a family to be reunited with grandfather’s ring.

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Signet Ring Found near Woodstock, Oxfordshire

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When I realised the ring I had been wearing non-stop for the last 10 years wasn’t on my finger one morning, I immediately panicked. This ring was a 21st birthday gift from my parents, engraved with my initials on the top and a message from them on the underside, so it was incredibly sentimental to me. I wracked my brains as to where it could be and my heart sunk when I realised there was a chance I could have lost it on a run the day before.  

I posted about losing my ring on an online neighbourhood community group which is where someone recommended ringfinders.com, which led me to finding Constantine. 10 days passed between losing my ring and Constantine coming to the rescue. These 10 days were spent tearing my hair out and turning my flat upside down, searching through hoover bags and food waste bins – glamorous!  

I had a gut feeling that my ring would most likely be somewhere outside, as I had been cleaning out my guinea pig’s hutch the morning I noticed it missing, and it was a particularly cold morning so my fingers had probably shrunk and were verging on numb so I wouldn’t have felt the ring come off.

 Constantine scanned the garden and piles of leaves thoroughly, but no joy. Then we decided to empty the garden waste bin (the contents of which covered the lawn!). I saw Constantine bend down to pick something up, and there it was! He’d found it! I couldn’t believe it. 

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Antique diamond ring recovered from longboat marina in Warwickshire

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I received a call from Willi who lost his diamond ring that his partner gave to him only three days before!

She had been looking for this very special ring for about six months and finally found one, only to be told by Willi that it had only just slipped from his finger while they were moored on their longboat in the marina where they live.

This happened about three weeks ago and they had since been on holiday on their boat, when they decided to give me a call.

In my time as a ringfinder I’ve done a fair few searches in water with great success. So we agreed I would do a search on Saturday 21st.  I was told the depth was about 25 inches, so off I went with my trusty Sorex Pro, waders and a couple of scoops.

When I got there the whole situation seemed a lot more challenging, there was no gentle slope onto the water but a drop straight into the marina.

A ladder was now required which we soon managed to find. Now the fun began , the depth may have been 25 inches in one place but it was more like 4 feet plus about 8 to 10 inches of soft silt. This meant the control box had to re positioned to the very end of the detector shaft and detecting with a normal one handed manner was not possible. Instead I had to use two hands and use the detector almost like a stirrer while also trying to keep my scoop and floating plastic tray nearby so I could offload the silt/clay into as it would not wash through my scoop very well.

Anyway after about 20 minutes, I kept getting a very clear signal that I just had to recover, problem was I was also getting very strong signals from the steel hull of a nearby boat, so that had to be moved. After much perseverance and much smelly water filling up my waders I managed to remove the signal from the marina bed and emptied the contents of my scoop into the tray. The pure signal was now in the tray! After a little feel around in the silt out came this beautiful ring. The only signal I managed to recover and it was the lost ring!

The look on Willi’s face was priceless, along with the sound of delight from both him and his partner and a fair few onlookers.

This has to be one of my most memorable recoveries , and so pleased at the outcome.

Willi has now been told he must have the ring re sized. Good idea as I really don’t want to have to go back into that slime pit again!

 

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Diamond set Omega watch recovered from lake in Warwickshire village

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This search was a difficult one. It was the second time I had been to recover some items that had been…well no easy way to say it but quite literally thrown in a lake.

The first visit was very difficult, it was just before Christmas and half the lake/ large pond was frozen which in some ways was helpful as the lost items would have been on the surface of the ice, so I only needed to look where the water had thawed. The water was extremely cold but I did have very high waders. that session I managed to recover one diamond ring and two bracelets before the cold really started to wear me down. Also I didn’t have the best sand scoop.

So I decided to return a couple of days ago with an all new sand scoop constructed by me using an old aluminium fire extinguisher. This thing worked great and was small enough not to grab masses of silt that was very heavy last time. The problem was this time there had been lots or rain and the water level was about a foot higher. this meant in the deepest parts the water would go over the top of my waders ( nearly 5 ft) and fill me up, very uncomfortable, also the control pod of my detector would have been submerged so that was cable tied to my shoulder strap. Anyway after a few hours and bits of trash I had a good signal, there was zero visibility in the water as one could imagine with the amount of silt, so retrieving that target was a challenge, what came out was part of a watch bracelet that was an item I had been tasked to recover. The rest of the watch had to be very close, another ten minutes and out came the rest of the the watch. It was diamond set ladies Omega Constellation with mother of pearl dial and diamonds for each numeral, and still working!

A very happy lady! and a very smelly drive home!

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Lost platinum wedding ring found in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

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« I was absolutely crushed when my wedding ring flew off into some very thick trees, bushes, ivy and other dark undergrowth when out jogging one evening. Unfortunately, I had been unable to see exactly what direction it had flown off in so had quite a wide search area of about 10 metres square to thrash through.
After a total of six hours (across the course of the evening when the incident happened and the morning after) of searching I had given up on ever seeing it again but decided to go online – just to see if I could get any last ideas of how I might find it and stumbled across Constantine’s profile. In short – he saved my life. I contacted Constantine in the morning and by the afternoon he had come up from Oxfordshire with his equipment. It took him about an hour to find the ring – deep under some brambles. 
Worth every penny of the modest call-out fee and reward! »
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