I received a call from Angela about two gold rings that were lost at the beach in Coronado. The usual story, the rings were removed for skin lotion and stowed for safekeeping but ended up in the sand when the couple packed up to leave. They were just visiting here and had to leave the next mornning, so time was of the essence. When I received the call, they were not available until later to show me in person the exact area but they were able to describe it fairly well.
Knowing that this beach gets searched often, my wife and I hot footed it down there and I began a grid. I usually do a quick, one-direction, no overlap scan first to hopefully save a lot of time. On a fresh drop in the dry sand like this one, that’s usually all it takes. No such luck this time. The area was reasonable large, even with their detailed description so I was resigned to the fact that I would be there a while. I then started another grid the other direction and worked slow and with a 50% overlap. Still no rings but I was finding coins and good sounding junk, so I knew nobody else had beat me to them. I had already expanded the search area quite a bit so I figured I had covered the “drop area” at least once. Ok, I guess I could have missed one of them but both? Time to start over so I began gridding the area in the same direction as my first quick scan but this time, slow with overlap and dig every sound. After another half hour or so, I get a scratchy foil/junk signal and out pops the engagement ring! After seeing the tiny size of it, I finally understood why I wasn’t getting a strong signal! It was maybe a size 1 1/2 and wire thin. I then ran a spiral pattern, with the first ring as the starting point. On my second time around, I found the wedding band, same scratchy 12-03 on my E-trac and same tiny wire sized band. I guess I’ll have to start digging more junk targets when I hunt for fun!
I made the fun phone call to her husband Mike and offered to drop by their hotel and drop them off. We met a happy Mike out front where he told us that he hadn’t informed his wife yet that they had been found. He was planning a surprise for later. Thank you, Mike, for the reward, and I hope the surprise turned out well and you had a safe flight home!
Mark, thanks for the story. Guess I will have one more question to ask if someone calls for a ringsearch, “Are the rings thin or normal size”? This is also good to know when doing fun searches.
Great going Mark…Sounds like the rings were platinum…Tin foil is were smaller platinum rings come in…Great job of re-doing the area!
Yeah Chris,
I expect platinum to be in that range but that was my first for gold. I’ve had as low as 12-06 on gold but it was still a solid sound. These were scratchy at best and sometimes there was no signal on a pass of the coil. I’ve had jean rivets sound off better! I should have put something in the photo to gauge the size but these things are tiny. Neither my wife or me were able to slip either one of them on any finger.