I received a text from Leslie on Monday afternoon concerning a lost engagement ring. She had found me with an internet search. As it was late in the day I told her I could come the next day, becase it was about a two hour drive from where I’m located. I got to the site at around 11:00 AM Central Time. The couple had been pulling a boat and pulled off into the parking lot of an old convience store that had been converted into another use. As they got out to adjust the boat straps, (the ring had been placed in the shallow tray under the door handle), the ring somehow went flying. They looked on the pavement and didn’t see it, but there was a grass strip between the pavement and a shallow ditch, then more grass just beyond the ditch. I started my search in the grass strip, then the ditch, then just beyond the ditch. Being this had been a convience store at one time I expected a lot of metal trash in the ground, and I was right. She did have a metal detector that had been her grandfather’s, but was overwhelmed by the abundance of metal trash. I searched slowly and methodically while listening for the white gold tone and looking for the target ID I typically get for white gold rings. After searching the entire area, no ring. Of course I found several pieces of foil. I turned off my CTX detector, and was explaing the process, where I search the most likely area first, then expand the search area if the ring is not found, (a visual scan of the pavement was next). At that time someone from the building, I’ll call him « Tom », came out and we explained what we were doing, and that a visual scan of the pavement was next. He struck out towards the highway, and in around ten seconds I heard him call out, « is this it? » He had found it around 10-12 feet from the edge of a busy highway! The ring was intact, but had some minor damage where it looked as though it had been run over and stuck in the tire treads before dropping off just before the highway. In a visual search, the more eyes the better. All in all, another successful search!
I received a call from a lady, that a lady at the Lake Norman Yacht Club had a young lady loss a silver ring that meant a lot to her. She lost it during a water balloons fight. I met the 2nd lady at the gate, parked, unloaded my detector. We made our way to the back of the event area where the lady proceeded to tell me where the young lady had lost it. Two targets later and it was found!
The young lady wasn’t there at the time, she had jumped on a boat ride. I met her dad, and he texted the photo of the ring to her, and she confirmed it was her lost ring.
Dad posed for the photo!
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Ryan contacted me several weeks ago about his wife’s white gold wedding/engagement band set she had lost in a grassy area of the apartments where they lived in Chattanooga. Because of his busy work schedule he had a difficult time getting the search arranged. I think he had actually purchased an off-the-shelf metal detector at a local store, but was apparently overwhelmed with the large amounts of metallic trash in the ground. We finally managed to arrange a search on June 9th. I arrived at the location at 7:15 PM on June 9th. I started my search as soon as I got the story from him, because we didn’t have much daylight left. Around 35 minutes later I found the engagement band portion totally hidden below the grass around four feet from the base of a large tree. It took me right at an hour more to find the wedding band portion, and it was about twenty feet from where I found the other half. It ended up being in an area outside of the original search zone. The grass had been cut, so maybe that’s how it ended up being over there. This portion of the ring was in full view of anyone walikg by, so it’s amazing nobody had seen it.
I received a call from a young lady asking if I would be willing to come help her find a pendant she had lost a few months ago while mowing the yard. She described it as sterling silver with diamonds, « about the size of a penny. » Being Oregon, there had been inches of rain since it had been lost, followed by a good length of hot, dry weather.
She had found my listing on Ring Finders and knew it was more than a 500 mile round trip, but hoped I would be willing to make the trip if she covered the fuel cost. I told her I would head down the next morning and got my gear loaded-up for an early start. I took the Equinox 700 and Pro-find 35 pinpointer, along with my AT Gold as a backup.
After my 4 hour drive down, I met Abigail, and she showed me the area of the yard she was certain the pendant had been lost. She told me she had used an older metal detector that was in her family to search the area, and I could see she had also dug out a section of the grass by hand. I pulled out the Nox 700 with a 11″ coil and began going over the area. I quickly discovered this area was littered with metal. Abigail watched as I pulled out a few nails and couple of screws.
After about 30 minutes, I realized I needed a new approach. I switched over to my 5″ coil and started agian. Right away, I handed Abigail a penny, followed quickly by a second one. Just a few feet away, I heard a good tone, but it was faint and the VDI showed it to be several inches deep. I had to check, so I hit it with the pinpointer and pulled-up a clump of dried grass and saw the faint edge of something shiny, A bit of scraping with my finger and out popped the missing pendant! (I’m guessing the erroneous depth reading was due to the size of the item and how it was laying)
I palmed it and swept the pinpointer around a few times. I stood up and asked Abigail if she could tell me again what the item looked like. She said she had a picture of it on her phone and started scrolling. I asked, « Does it look like this? » and dropped the pendant in her hand. I think all of us love to see that suprised, happy look.
Oh, and I did point out that it was smaller than a penny.
We received a call from August late one afternoon. He had lost his gold wedding band, in a flower bed, when adding mulch. He searched but did not find it. When he gave his location, we realized it was just a 10 minute drive. Carrie and I loaded the detectors in the truck and went to the site. Carrie, as always, grilled the client while I prepped the equipment. She thought it logical for the ring to fall off when he washed his hands over the flower bed. She claimed that search area and I started on the other end of the bed. We used pin pointers and crawled through the bed. Carrie found the ring under a flower plant in 10 minutes. After some pictures we left for supper.
Thanks, August, for the generous reward.
Got a referral from Dave Oliver about this lost platinum ring that has been lost since July of 2022. I called up Mr. Singh and got the back story. Turns out his wife worked many hours making minimum wage saving every penny to buy this ring for her husband. It had great sentimental value to the Singh’s. They’ve been married for 17 years! So last July, he was mowing and got into some yellow jackets. In the process of running back towards the house and swatting bees his ring flew off in the yard, but he wasn’t sure where he lost because he didn’t realize it for over 3 hours! I started in that area and in about 20 mins, I get a signal and boom there it was about 2 inches down. After finding it and walking back to my truck to put my equipment away, I see him coming out into the garage. He asked me, “DID YOU FIND IT!” I said, “YES SIR” as I held up my finger with it on my hand. He broke down crying!! The wife comes out and she breaks down crying too. We sat and just talked about things for about another hour and one thing he said that is so true and makes you think. He was saying to his wife life moves fast, so fast that all you can do is take mental pictures as your life flies by. He told me he said to his wife that after everything in life is gone. The house, car, kids grown and moved out. The one thing he wanted to do was sit on the porch looking back at his life while feeling this ring on his hand. The ring she worked so hard to buy for him and their love for one another and their marriage together.
2023 ring count: 10 FTY
3 – Total recoveries FTY
1 – gold & silver ring (1 recovery)
1 – platinum (1 recovery)
1 – tantalum (1 recovery)
0 – gold rings FTY
4 – silver rings FTY
3 – mixed – copper – tungsten – steel – aluminum – junk rings FTY
“DIG IT ALL, SAVE SOME RINGS & BURY THE DRAMA!”
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Hannah lost her rose gold diamond ring in the back yard of her boyfriend, Bradley’s house. I received a call from Bradley, but a 3 week trip delayed the hunt. While he was waiting, he borrowed and rented detectors and attempted to find the ring. No luck. When I returned from my trip, I headed out to find the still-lost ring. Carrie was busy but I still brought her equipment. The search area was not large but contained a lot of coins and buried metal. That along with no published data on rose gold discrimination numbers created a lot of “false finds”. After Bradley and I covering the area without locating the ring, (Carrie’s equipment was put to good use) we started a sectioned, crawling, pin pointer search (I made this term up). On the last section I looked in an area we had not included in the original search. There, in the shade of a neighbor’s building, was the ring sitting on bare dirt, fully visible. Sometimes being lucky is better than being good. We reunited Hannah with her ring and got a load of pictures. Carrie regrets not being there for the successful hunt.
Thank you, Bradley and Hannah for the generous reward.
So last week I received a call from a wonderful couple that had lost a wedding ring in the leaves in there back yard. This call was from a local couple about 6 miles away. This was a treat for me because it had been a while since I have had a call that was just down the road. I know from what I was told that she really cared about her ring. She was very conscientious about losing the ring so to be safe she removed it and placed it in her pocket. She had done a little work in a flower garden the corner of the house and when she finished, she felt the ring in her pocket. She also had her young son out running around in back with her in the back yard. Part of playing around they formed a big pile of leaves started to bury one another in the pile of leaves. Following playing in the leaves her husband cleaned up the back yard raking and hauling the leaves down to a compost pile further down in the back yard. She had felt for the ring and her heart sank. It was gone. They spent several hours scouring the back yard and leaf pile looking for the ring and nothing was found.
You just know that feeling of something near and dear to your heart and it’s gone. She did a search online for Ringfinders.com and found Paul Nolan a local recovery specialist and texted him. Somehow the text was missed and the following morning her husband gave Paul a call. He asked if I had received the text that hos wife had sent, “ No”. So he asked if it would be possible to come out and see if we could find the ring. About an hour later I pulled into the driveway. They gave me a quick tour of what had happened. So I grabbed my detector and started a quick preliminary search. My primary search area was going to be the leaf pile in the back. Within a minute of reaching the pile location I received a great signal. I tried to carefully move some of the leaves, and it was hiding well. I had left my pin-pointer in the car so I went back to retrieve that. I also brought a small battery-operated blower that I grabbed. Once back at the pile I found the location with the pin pointer and put the blower on low and blew the leaves away from a small one foot circle, and there it was down between some rocks. So I grabbed my equipment and started to hall it back up to the car. As I was heading up she came out on the deck and I asked her if she would like to come grab the ring? What you found the ring? In total disbelief. Come on down. Her husband soon joined her and I took them down to the location where I had blowen the leaves away and they started looking after about 15 seconds she spotted it in the rocks. She was ecstatic. The following pictures are the ring back where it belonged and another photo of the ring.
It was really nice having a call close to home, and one that went as well as could possibly could. What a treat it was. I wish they all would go so well. Congratulations on getting the ring back. I am so happy for the both of you.
Brooke contacted me even though she was in Nashville and I was in Chattanooga. There are two ring finders in the Nashville area, but neither of them were available. I agreed to go, even though it was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive for me. She had lost a gold pendant while she was competing in a charity event at a local golf course. The pendent was from her late grandfather, so it had a lot of sentimental value. I left early enough from the Chattanooga area to get there by 6:00AM so we could get started before the course opened. That event was a sack race. They were not on the fairways, but in the grass off to the side. I’m not familiar with the course layout, but I think it was off to the side of tee box #10 where they had the sack race. Brooke had previously gotten permission from the course manager. The first thing I did was scan the edges of the cart paths, and it was not there, except for a square pull-tab. Yep, those are everywhere we go. Fortunately, someone had taken a video clip of the sack race, and I could clearly see she had the pendent on during the race. But more importantly, I could use that to hone in on where the race took place. From the viewpoint of the video there were several small trees on the left background. In the left foreground there was a grassy hill that had been scalped on the top by the mowers. On the right very edge of the screen I saw a homeowner’s metal fence that was bordering his back yard. So, using those landmarks I was able to pinpoint exactly where the sack race took place. Most of the grass there was short enough to see the pendent if you walked close to it. Some of the grass was tall enough to hide an object that small, so that’s where I focused my detecting first. While I was scanning the taller grass, Brooke asked if there was anything she could do. I said most of this grass is short enough that you could most likely see it if you walked right over it. So, knowing exactly where the race had taken place, I had started scanning around halfway to the finish line where the taller grass was, and Brooke started walking ahead of me near the finish line where the shorter grass was. After around twenty minutes or so, I saw Brooke lean over and pick something up, she said, “I found it!” It was visible if you walked right over it, so someone else could have seen it before we got there. Fortunately, it was still there.