This was one of my favorite recoveries. Not just because of the unique story but because of the great people involved. I got a call from Marilynn and I could hear her husband David talking in the background. Marilynn began to explain their story and David quickly took the phone. I knew it was going to be an interesting one when David said, “Man, I’m just embarrassed to tell you this”. It turns out that David has been metal detecting for years and the day before he was trying to pass on the love for the hobby. He was having a friend over to check out a detector and David decided to go out in the yard before his buddy got there and plant his very large, solid gold antique wedding band in front of the trash can so he’d know right where it was. Shortly thereafter his friend was finding some pennies and some other bits of metal but he never found David’s ring. Finally David had to spoil the surprise and he told his friend to go over by the trash can and see what he could find. When he still didn’t find it, David took his detector back to find it himself. You can imagine his surprise when he couldn’t find it either and he now had lost his own planted wedding band in the yard. 😳. They ended up trying a second detector and then ultimately spent the rest of the day completely digging up the grass and dirt from about a 5×5’ section of the yard. The next morning, David remembered a friend of his that also detected and thought that maybe he would have some higher grade detectors and got him to come over. Well he did bring two very good machines over but you guessed it, they weren’t able to find it. That’s when they searched the internet and found me. I was intrigued with the story and ended up actually knowing the guy who had gone that morning. I got some info about his settings, etc. from him and told him that now I wanted to find it just so I could good naturedly give him a hard time if I was able to find it. 😃 When I got there, the yard was exactly as described and there was a 5×5’ section in the grass that was torn to pieces down into the dirt. David and Marilynn obviously wanted this ring back. I won’t bore you with too many details but I used a very advanced machine with 2 different coils and we dug up some very deep bits of copper pipe but no ring. All the while, David was adamant that he had placed it right there. I completely believed him but my wife always has a saying that “if they knew where it was, they wouldn’t need me.” Wise woman! So I started telling David stories about all the crazy places I had recovered rings for people. We hit it off as we continued to very slowly search that small area. Finally I told David that I totally believed that he had planted the ring there but would he please trust me and let me walk down the yard a bit. He told me I could and I didn’t go another 5 feet before I got a buried tone a few inches deep. He dropped down and popped it out and it was an old penny. I told him that with the size of his ring, that was the sound I wanted to hear. As I stood up I rescanned the spot and right beside it was another tone but only about 2 inches down. David said that we might as well pop out the other penny just to get it out of the way. When his beautiful antique ring came out of the ground he was absolutely thrilled while at the same time perplexed how it got over there. I told him that sometimes it just takes another perspective and that I thought he may have accidentally thrown it over there with a shovel the previous day and that either himself, his wife or the two other metal detectorists could have pressed it into the ground with a boot while they were focused on the other area. Either way, David and Marilynn were beyond thrilled to get it back. David said that my reputation had been on the line but that he was amazed. 😃 Im so glad I was able to help y’all out. No more planting family heirlooms in the yard! LOL
