Within 48 hours of being registered with The Ring Finders I received my first call.  Happy and excited with the prospect of my first recovery I set off for Bournemouth to search for a young ladies lost engagement ring in Bournemouth with the’ big day’ looming.  I grabbed my equipment and set off right away along Studland Beach – a place I had previously recovered many lost gold rings and jewellery.  Fortunately I received a very relieved message from her that upon returning home and taking off her boots, out fell the ring!

On a family trip five years and one day after Josh and Christine were married, Josh’s platinum wedding ring slipped off his finger in knee-deep water at Pilot Beach on the mid north coast of New South Wales in Australia.

Christine’s email arrived in my inbox four days later closely followed by that “it’s on” feeling I’m sure we all experience at the start of a search.

Pilot Beach is about a ninety minute drive north from my home and it is probably best described as a semi-surf beach lying inside two break walls at the mouth of the Camden Haven River.

After speaking to Christine and gathering  information on the time of loss, surf conditions, tide height and the arrival of  Google Earth photos of the location and several family photos from the day we set off to search for the ring. Christine expressed gratitude that someone would drop everything and head out looking for something for a total stranger and I suspect that she was not overly hopeful that the mission would be a successful one.

Searching for lost items with no direct contact with the owner can be difficult and Christine was speaking to me from Sydney but her photos and maps and the accuracy of her memory of the location that became apparent on arrival at the search area provided the confidence I needed.

With the search area pegged out from the maps and photos I went to work with my Minelab Excalibur. Encouragingly there were few signals from the detector in the upper sector of the search area and with one possible target marked in the mid sector in about a foot of water. Digging here was futile as the surf returned most of the sand dug right back into the hole so I completed the lower sector in waist deep water as the tide dropped locating one bottle top for the rubbish bin.

A few minutes of careful digging and scanning back  at the marked signal uncovered a  platinum ring with the inscription confirming that it was the target ring approximately one foot from the surface of the sand. A quick message to Christine on the phone while dodging the beginning of a thunder storm saw us back in the car for the return journey. Mission accomplished thanks to The Ring Finder

Nick

It’s the beginning of March, and soon the snowbanks will be melting.   Lost IPODs, rings, keys, and other valuables will soon be revealed.  My equipment can find rings in snow, but a good spring thaw expands search possibilities.

I found 15 lost rings last year, and 16 the year before.   With the ground thawing and lakes and rivers opening up, now is the time to contact me if you would like to schedule a search.

Don’t worry if it’s been lost a long time.  Once, I was called to find a depression-era gold class ring that was lost in the late 1940’s.  At the time, a little girl had borrowed the ring from her dad to play with it, and hung it on a pine tree branch so she could climb the tree.  It flipped off and was seemingly gone forever.   Many decades later, it took me a bit of luck and 20 minutes worth of searching with a Tesoro Silver Sabre to find it.  Smiles were on everyone’s faces as their precious artifact was returned.

The school insignia needed some restoration, but the main portion of the ring kept its beautiful shine, as gold always does.

So call me to discuss your loss, and perhaps schedule a search.   The least one can do is try.

An icy patch on the sidewalk in front of Brian McGrath’s home proved treacherous when Brian’s feet slipped out from underneath him. After collecting himself on a set of nearby steps he removed a glove and began dusting the snow and grit from his coat, but as he did so, he felt his heavy, white-gold wedding ring leave his finger. It seemingly vanished into the whiteness around him.

Despite Brian’s best search efforts the ring eluded discovery, even when he rented a metal detector. And his dissapointment only intensified when someone told him,
“Metal detectors are not able to detect white gold.”

It was then Brian contacted me by email through The Ring Finder’s directory. I assured him that my equipment, tuned properly and under most conditions, was able to ‘see’ white gold just fine. This technological fact, coupled with my thirty-seven years of metal detecting experience was a huge comfort to Brian. We agreed to conduct a search early the next morning.

Coffee cups in hand and bundled up against icy winds coming off Lake Michigan, we reviewed the historical sequence of events on location. Finally, Brian stood at ‘ground zero’ and re-enacted his arm movements (except for his spill of course) to the best of his memory. Then the search began. It didn’t take long, however, until I heard the distinctive bark in my headphones I was anticipating. A few scrapes of white powder was all that was needed to bring Brian’s ring to the light of day once again.

Brian, I enjoyed assisting you with the recovery of your ring. Thanks too, for your kind reward. And all the best to you and your wife as you anticipate a new addition to your family in just a few weeks time! May the story of your ring continue as a treasured family memory for many years ahead.

I got a call last week from Obi who lives in Muskegon, MI. He and his fiancee were in their back yard horsing around in the snow. Prior to them playing in the snow Obi’s fiancee gave him her ring which needed resizing. He put it in his pocket and together they enjoyed the new fallen snow. It was a small back yard and when they started to go into the house he felt in his pocket and said the ring was gone. Obi had a metal detector junior and tried to find the ring but couldn’t. The next day he went out and rented a better detector to no avail. There is a septic tank cover near where he lost it and the detector kept peeping.

Obi looked on line for “find my lost ring” and came across www.theringfinders.com he then looked in the directory and found my name. With a lot of things going on during the week and being it wasn’t lost in a public area I told Obi I would be out Sunday Feb 24.

My brother Doug and I searched the 50′ by 75′ back yard and could not get a signal on the ring. We cleared all the snow off the septic tank area and check the snow with no luck. Since the loss there has been about 6 to 10 inches of snowfall which made hunting a little harder because the snow was very heavy.

Obi gave me money for gas and I told him my next trip after a thaw was on me. I assured his fiancee not to worry we will find it.