Diamond Earring, Holmdel NJ, recovered by Edward Trapper, NJ Ring Finder
On my way home from work I received a text from Habib. He was very anxious to see if I would be able to find his wife’s beautiful diamond earing she accidentally lost at a large family party the day before. He sent me some pics and I was relieved to see the size, due to the fact many diamond earrings are extremely hard to locate. We agreed on a mutual time to meet later in the day, and for him to bring the other earing so I would be able to scan it with my metal detector, which helps tremendously, knowing exactly what tone to listen for. With that information I am able to block out most of the other tones I will receive in a backyard setting. Once on location I met with a gentleman who showed me the entire party setup, and the main areas Saba, Habib’s wife had spent most of the time that day. I decided to begin the search, as Habib was going to be about another 15 minutes due to some heavy traffic. I had quickly covered an area where the tables were set up, especially where Saba was sitting. The yard area was quite huge, and there were many food stations, and activities going on throughout the day. Once Habib arrived I listened to the other earring, and was quite pleased with the solid low tone it gave off. With that information I was able to move quite a bit faster, due to the fact that not may signals of that type would be present. I of course would check anything fairly close. I had changed direction after the first location was done, simply due to the fact the foot traffic would be moving in the direction I was working. I made one pass, and just after I turned to make another one, BINGO, my metal detector emitted a tone that I was almost certain was Saba’s missing earing. After moving the grass around a bit, there it was pressed down even with the dirt, just out of human sight. Luckily there was no damage to the earing. I looked around to find Habib, and he had walked way over to the neighbors house, where there was valet parking, and another possible area the earring could have been hiding. When I showed Saba’s earing to him, he was it total shock, as this recovery could be labeled “a needle in a haystack” Once again all parties involved knew the tiny details to narrow down this vast search area, to just the areas where his wife had spent most of the day.
I was at a family picnic when I received a call from Anthony, stating that he had just lost his beautiful cross on the beach, somewhere in the area they were sitting. It was early afternoon and I told him I would be able to swing by soon, and to secure the area so nobody else came and setup their beach things in the exact same spot. Anthony assured me that was not a problem because they were there for the entire day, plus the fact he was very anxious to get his cross back where it belonged around his neck. We spoke about the events leading up to the mishap, that’s when he told me about the big creator he and his friends had dug that day in the sand where they were sitting. He said they had all been digging around looking for the cross for quite a while, but were positive it must be there somewhere, because he had spent the best part of the morning there, digging. It was then I asked them to please stop digging otherwise the cross may get buried to deep for my machine to pick it up. When I arrived I could see the creator from the dune walkover, and it was pretty big. Sure enough, it was close to 4′ deep, and roughly 6′ in circumference. I hopped in, scanned the entire bottom and the walls, without even a squeak of a sound from my metal detector. Next, I scanned the piles of sand they had pulled out of the hole with no luck either. I asked them to pull the piles down lower, to an average of no more than 10″ higher than the regular beach level. Once again, no luck anywhere, so only one more place to look was the bottom, after they pulled about 10″ of sand out. Now, with all the sand moving, I assured that the cross was positively NOT in, or anywhere around the crater. So, back to the drawing board, where he mentioned they were tossing a football on the tide line earlier, and that his friend did tackle him there. I told him I really wish he mentioned that earlier, as the tide had been rising very quickly. Once he showed me the area, the cross was in my scoop within 2 minutes. If Anthony told me that one detail of the day, my search would have started there, and all the sand moving could have been eliminated. Lost of detective work is needed to rescue items from their hiding places.
If you didn’t have a chance to read the original story, Jennifer had lost 2 ring in the water where they dock their boat. I recovered the one ring (wedding band) on the first trip, but the beautiful family heirloom diamond ring was hiding on the muddy bottom, in a location that my metal detector had not yet covered. It was getting late so I packed it in for the day and promised I would return after vacation in a few weeks. It was a safe location, otherwise I would have never postponed looking for the second ring. We made arrangements as I usually do prior to showing up, and quickly got to work upon my arrival. I decided to use my other machine with the 6′ coil, as the target location is a much more concentrated location. The reason for that was because marina locations tend to be very trashy, due to the fact that once an item is dropped into the water, its usually forgotten about. The larger coil I had used on the first recovery attempt was picking up to many signals at one time, therefore the beautiful filigree diamond ring was getting overpowered by other metallic items on the bottom. WELL, that was obviously a good idea because I had Jennifer’s ring in my scoop in under 5 minutes.
