I got a call from a lady saying that she lost her engagement ring in Lake Huron at Crescent State Park in Michigan. My daughter and I traveled 2 1/2 hours to meet the couple. After they showed me where it should be in the water, I got searching and found it in about 15 minutes. It was worth driving that distance to see the smiles on their faces.
I got a call from Sydnie on Saturday the 4th and she said her friend who was down from Ohio for the 4th had lost her engagement ring in the lake right behind her house. They were floating about fifteen to twenty feet from the dock. Before I could make it over there they had to return home without the ring. I was able to get there for the search on Tuesday. I geared up for the search using my Manticore with the Gray Ghost Amphibian headphones and a sand scoop. Fortunately the water was only around 4 to 4 1/2 feet deep there. The bottom was a very shallow layer of soft mud, maybe less that 2 inches, with a hard pan of clay underneath. That made it difficult to use a sand scoop, but I made it work. Closer in to the dock there was a lot of iron and other debris that made the going slow, but as I got further away from the dock those signals were further in between. The water was deep enough that I couldn’t see the screen on the Manticore, and the lost ring was white gold so I could concentrate on the low tones. After about an hour and a half I was at least twenty feet away from the dock, maybe a little more, and I got the tell tale double beep low tone that was very strong. The lost ring was white gold so I could concentrate on the low tones. I lifted the detector out of the water to see the screen and it said 06 for the target ID. With the hard pan clay down there it took me three attempts to get the target in the scoop, but there it was, a dainty white gold ring.
Received a call from a woman who had lost her diamond engagement ring, in her yard in Chicago.
She had been waving her hand while showing her fiancé just how loose the ring was… you can probably guess what happened next.
The search area was full of tall grass and heavy trash, but after 45 minutes, luck—and persistence—paid off.
The ring was recovered, and it was absolutely beautiful.
I got a call from a lady saying that her husband lost his wedding ring at Sanford Lake in Michigan. I met them both there to try to find it. The husband said he was in about a 75 foot long area along the beach in the water. He said that he didn’t go out farther than 30 feet. He was playing with his kids and crawling on the lake bottom. I figured that I would start at where he could crawl and keep his head above water. In less than five minutes and my first signal, I scooped up his ring.They were both happy to have it back and it made my day to get it back to him.
Chris contacted me on Sunday morning and said his wife had lost her ring in the front yard while throwing water ballons on the 4th. He showed me the area they were at so I started there. I was fairly certain that early on in the conversation he said it was white gold, so I was mainly concentrating on shallow low signals. But, after around 30 minutes I got a very strong 72 on the Manticore with the telltale double beep that said it was very shallow or on the surface. A 72 is definately not white gold, but a silver or copper tone, and of course I investigated to see what it would be. It was the lost ring, and after looking at it I saw a 925 inside the band. So it was silver and not white gold. His wife was estatic and said she went to sleep crying the night before. In my book they are newlyweds, only 6 months in. A successful recovery!
Nick contacted me and said that his wife had lost her wedding band while preparing a raised plant bed, but she wasn’t sure which one. He and his wife has a matching tungsten carbide band set. The first bed I checked had a good signal, but it turned out to be a larger deep signal. The second bed was larger in size, but all of them had galvanized metal sheeting for the side walls. That was a problem, but I managed to work around it. In the second bed I found a signal that was showing a 30 on the Manticore, but was close to the metal side wall so that number may have been skewed. That 30 on the Manticore turned out to be her ring. It was about four inches deep. The total seach time was only about twelve minutes.
Received a call from a woman in Chicago that lost her small gold ring while working in her garden on her 10th anniversary. What I love about this job is I get the opportunity to meet the nicest people, today was no exception, hugs all around! Very thin ring but found it within 15 minutes.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
I was out detecting a beach in Michigan when I found this Memorial pendant. It had a thumb print and a name with dates on the back. I put it on the local facebook page and was able to find the owner. It turns out that it belonged to a young man whose grandfather died. I mailed it out to him and his mother recorded a message from him thanking me. This is the most rewarding hobby to have. You can watch the full video of the find on YouTube at the ringmeister. The message from Hunter is one of the shorts.
Well, I wanted to share that after just 6 hours of going live I received my first call to help locate a lost Brooch. The lady informed me that it could be in her house, car, or local supermarket, but she was also in her yard working and was praying it wasn’t at the supermarket. She lived a half hour away and was a very stormy afternoon. I told her that after checking the radar to see if the storms had passed that I was enroute to her. It wasn’t a large area to cover and in less than an hour I had covered the area completely with no luck of it being there. I was hoping for a slam dunk but only had about a 25% chance it being in the grass. I’m hoping to hear that she finds it in her car or house.
August 16, 2025
Wedding Crisis Averted
I was married 24 years ago and it rained on my wedding day… at an outdoor wedding… in a wide-open space… with only a canopy of trees to hide under. Not a hard rain, but enough to get everyone wet. Once the ceremony was over, my minutes-old bride and I ran across a grassy field hand-in-hand, smiling, and laughing at the timing of everything. It was perhaps our first disappointment to overcome as a married couple, and I think that experience has given us a good perspective in life.
There are endless things that can go wrong at a wedding. It could rain, the cake
might be dry, a bridesmaid may trip and drop her bouquet, or an important someone might show up late. Generally, these are overcome in the moment or simply fade from memory. On the other hand, there are a handful of things that can taint the wedding day and leave a lasting bad memory, like losing the wedding ring.
On the morning of August 16th, I was metal detecting Fontana Beach on Geneva Lake in Wisconsin. When I came out of the water and checked my phone, I had a text from a friend of a bride and groom that were married the day before. “We lost a wedding ring in Fontana last night off the shore. Is it possible to have someone come out and look today?”
The timing could not have been more perfect. I was still in my wetsuit and only a five-minute drive to the Air bnb in Fontana where the bridal party was staying.
I arrived with hair still wet from my morning dive to a group of young people enjoying their morning coffees. I was kindly offered a coffee myself.
In short order the crisis was relayed. The bride and groom, Olivia and Houston, were married yesterday and spontaneously decided to jump into the lake together. An open pier a short walk down the shore path provided the opportunity. Moments after the plunge, Houston realized his ring was gone. Friends dived with basic goggles the next morning searching for the ring among the seaweed and rocks. It’s certainly not impossible to find a lost ring with the eyes only, but highly unlikely give
n the depth and conditions underwater.
Two friends walked me to the pier, and within a few minutes of getting into the water, I had the ring.
The details provided by the happy couple’s friends made the search precise and short. It was a joyous occasion returning the ring to the bridal party at the Air bnb. I never met the couple myself, but was pleased to play a small part in making their wedding day story one with a unique twist and a happy ending.
Congratulations, Olivia and Houston! I hope you have many happy and healthy years together.