Ring lost at Coronado beach Found

This is a combined effort of mine and Stan Ross’s. Stan got the initial call from Matthew about a ring he lost at Coronado beach in San Diego. It was supposedly lost within 5 ft of a certain fire ring within a group of 8 fire rings in a big square pattern. Due to a miscommunication of some sort, Stan search 4 of the rings without success only to find later that it was lost at a different ring. Since Stan lives almost 100 miles from that beach, he called me and asked if I would be interested in heading over and giving it a shot since I was fairly close by. I said sure, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking “oh boy, a fire ring!” (not). Sure enough, when I get there and start hunting (the proper ring this time), it is just carpet bombed with nails and other debris all around the pit and out several yards. To make it worse, the fire ring itself has steel reinforcement in the concrete so hunting up next to it would need to be relegated to the pin pointer and scoop. After several hours, coil and setting changes, and hand scooping around the fire ring, I almost gave up but I continued a grid pattern out farther and farther from the ring. At about a radius of 20-25 feet away I get another multitarget tone with readings all over the place. Every now and then a good “gold ring” reading would poke through so I figured, what the heck, scoop and see what it is. My detector said it was only 2″ down so I just took a shallow scoop of sand but didn’t find anything. I next took a full scoop and started to shake out the sand. First thing visible was a screw top, then a melted piece of aluminum can, then a new condom still in the foil wrapper, and then at the bottom was a gold ring! That baby was hiding real well but the E-trac managed to sniff it out even with all that extra junk trying to mask it. The inscription matched so I knew I had Matthew’s ring. I contacted Stan and Matthew and since Matthew lived out of town, I got his shipping info so I could mail the ring to him. That is always a great phone call to make! I was only able to photograph the ring so you’ll just have to use your imagination to see Matthew’s smile! Thank you Matthew for the nice reward and thank you Stan for the referal. I owe you at least a good meal so think of a place! Here’s Matthew’s ring…