lost ring Tag | Page 5 of 168 | The Ring Finders

1 September 2025.  Yesterday, Labor Day Sunday, Nick lost his wedding ring at the beach.  It was a special ring because it had been his father’s as well as his grandfather’s.  While he felt somewhat resigned to the loss, his wife Hannah didn’t give up easily.  She searched the internet in the evening and fortunately found the RingFinders.  Nick called me this morning and we arranged to meet at the beach within about half an hour.

At the beach, Nick described where his family had been sitting the previous day and where he had been in the water for a relatively short time.  He had not noticed his ring was missing until they returned to their B&B.  This left a range of possibilities for where the ring was lost but the most likely was the beach.  Where to search first?  The tradeoff is between the dry sand (easy to search) and the water (more difficult but also more likely).  I started easy, but after 10 or 15 minutes it was apparent that the ring was not in the area where Nick and Hannah thought they had been sitting.

Next, the water.  Nick told how he had been wading and sitting in knee-deep water off to the west of where their beach chairs were.  The current tide level was lower than it had been the previous day so I started with a long swath at the wave’s edge – no result.  With further discussion, Nick felt that he’d been at a break in slope a bit farther out so I moved there for the next swath.  This location was somewhat concerning because it contained thick, loose sandy gravel that was being moved about by wave action, raising the possibility that the ring could already be deeply buried and possibly beyond detector range.  Fortunately within a few minutes I heard that sweet signal of success and had Nick’s ring in my scoop!

I dumped the gravel but left the ring in the scoop and walked up the beach to where Nick stood.  I didn’t mention the ring but told him about the bad bottom conditions as I approached.  Then the part I love the most – I held out the scoop so he could look inside, and suddenly all was well with the world!

We wrapped up with some very happy conversation and pictures.  As it turned out, Nick, Hannah and their daughter were packed and ready to drive home, ending their Cape Cod vacation.  I’m really pleased that I was able to change that ending from a sad to a joyful one as they hit the road!

Nick’s 3-generation wedding band.

A happy family ready to head home from their Cape Cod vacation.

30 August 2025.  Sometimes you’re lucky.  I received a call from Philip, who’d been referred to me by my RingFinder friend Rick.  He told me that Jen had lost her 2 kt oval diamond engagement ring in the dry sand where they were sitting and asked if I could come with a metal detector to find it.  I of course said yes and arrived at the beach 15 minutes later.  As (good!) luck would have it, they had found the ring just as I arrived, so all was well.

Jen described how the ring went flying off her finger as she was putting on sunscreen.  The ring disappeared in the fine sand, which is not unusual, and it can be very difficult if not impossible to recover with just finger sifting if you’re not certain where it landed.  A dry-sand loss, however, is a lucky situation because a metal detector, when used by a trained eye/ear, can make recovery quick and easy if the location of the loss is reasonably constrained.   It becomes much more difficult with a loss in the water, where tides, wind & waves, rocks, shifting sand, and location uncertainty can greatly complicate a search.

I snapped some pictures of Jen and her ring and we expressed thanks all around, particularly that that beautiful diamond was back on her finger.  A lucky day!

Jen’s beautiful engagement ring.

Jen with her engagement ring back in place with her wedding rings.

17 August 2025.  About three weeks ago I recovered a man’s wedding ring for Dave at a local private beach.  Dave had been referred to me by Bill, and today Bill gave me another call for help.  This time a guest, Maggie, had lost her diamond engagement and wedding rings, most likely at the same beach where Dave’s ring had fled his finger.  (Is there something about that beach that grabs rings off fingers?).  In any case he gave me Maggie’s phone number and I called her and left a message.  She called back within a short time and we met a half hour later to search for her rings.

Maggie explained that the rings had disappeared yesterday but she was not certain where they were lost.  She, her husband Jerry, and friends had searched the house where they were staying, with no result.  The remaining options were the yard, the walking route to the beach (a few hundred feet), and the dry beach sand.  Although she had gone into the water for a time, Maggie was certain that the rings were not on her finger when she entered the water.  After some Q&A and discussion, the dry beach sand appeared to be the best option for where to start the search.

I walked down to the beach with Maggie and Jerry, and when we arrived they described the relatively limited area where they thought they’d been sitting and where their activities were on the previous day.  There was a bit of a complication because other beach goers were on the spot where Maggie and Jerry surmised that they’d been sitting, but those folks were kind enough to let me ‘play through’ as I did several search swaths through the area.  There were some good signals but those invariably were from bottle caps (Corona is a popular one – they seem to ‘find your beach’) or aluminum pop tops (you know, the ones people insist on wresting from the top of a can so they can throw them in the sand); both of these can give a signal close to that of a gold ring.

As I finished covering that prime search area Jerry came over and proposed that they may have been sitting farther north near a different set of beach-grass clumps, so I shifted my search to that area.  It then took only a couple of minutes before I hit a target that sounded just like what I was looking for.  I took a scoop of sand and shook it out, and Maggie’s diamond engagement ring was lying on the bottom of the scoop pretty as you please.  Her wedding ring was still sitting on the sand at my feet.  I held up her engagement ring and motioned her over.  She and Jerry arrived in disbelief and as she glanced down she also found and picked up her own wedding ring from the sand.  As you can imagine, the celebration was intense and was joined by some nearby beach folk who’d been monitoring the proceedings.

Maggie and Jerry celebrated their second wedding anniversary only a couple of weeks ago, and they were just preparing to return to their home from vacation.  I’m really happy that Maggie’s rings are back on her finger where they belong, and that she and Jerry are able to return home elated, not burdened with the sadness of broken emotional ties and beautiful rings lost, perhaps forever.

Maggie’s diamond and sapphire engagement ring and her diamond-studded wedding ring.

Maggie and Jerry, a very happy couple.