Platinum Wedding Band found and reunited in Santa Cruz

I recieved an a.m. call today from Paul stating that his platinum wedding band had been lost the day before. The ring had apparently been dropped in the sand in an area near the bottom of the stairs to their property. Upon meeting Paul, I found out that he had done his homework.  After searching briefly for the band he realized that it was more likely they would drive the ring deeper than find it so the search was stopped. He also performed a perfect re-enactment of how the ring was lost so I figured it was just a matter of putting my coil over it. Being a platinum ring, I decided my Whites MXT would be the best machine in my arsenal to find this lower-conductivity material. It turned out to be the right call. I began my search about 6′ outside of my pre-determined area of highest probability….just to be thorough. Another good call. I started by sweeping my coil into and around some large rocks and also across the bottom step of the stairs, which was covered with about 3″-4″ of sand. I swept out in front of the stairs and made one more sweep across the bottom step. That is when it got interesting. These old concrete stairs were reinforced with steel. It is exposed and rusting out in many spots. My MXT was very noisy and chattery dealing with this when I noticed the threshold null out (go silent)  in one spot. Nothing that stood out too much but just a little….different. It was directly over the bottom step…with it’s reinforcing steel ! It was also up against the riser of the next step (also with reinforcing steel in it) so there was very little room to sweep the coil and a lot of interference. This one particular spot was a worst case scenario for trying to locate anything let alone platinum. I re-swept the spot in tighter and tighter arcs and was eventually able to isolate a “clean” signal.  A repeating VDI of 30. From the looks of it, the target was probably a large pulltab. The reading I was getting was too high for what I was searching for…or was it ? Paul is a pretty big guy and he did say that the ring wore a little loose but could it be this big ? I reached down into the sand to retrieve my “pulltab” and out came a beautiful, huge Tiffany’s platinum wedding band. I was stunned. Total search time…about 1 minute BUT the thing is, the ring was sitting in the one spot in the area it COULD have hidden. The iron in the concrete was almost hiding the ring. The signal was being overwhelmed and almost completely masked. The detecting gods were testing me today and I passed.  This “easy” recovery could have easily been missed without a solid plan and sound tactics. The feeling of reuniting Paul with his “lost” ring is one I can’t describe..and won’t even try. I even got a tearful “I love you” from his mother-in-law and THAT was worth it’s weight in gold…or platinum.