Compass

My "That's mine" story? Years ago I found a big gold high school class ring in a lake. I tried to locate the owner from the info on and in the ring to no avail. Eventually I went to sell the ring on eBay and had bids up to $200 when someone messaged me saying that they thought that the ring was theirs. Sure enough, they provided details that proved that they had lost it so I cancelled the bidding and returned the ring. I only asked for them to pay for postage but I kind of felt like I had lost $200.

Beach wet sand: Primary - TDI BH....... Secondary - Excalibur Beach black sand: P - TDI BH.....S - Dual Field Beach wet sand trashy: P - Excal.....S - Equinox Beach in water: P - Excal.....S - Nox Beach dry sand: P - Nox.....S - Excal Lake in water: P - Nox/Excal.....S - Nox/Excal Dirt/grass: P - Nox.....S - Don't really have a backup but I could use the Excal, I suppose. It's nice to have options when you need them. With the exception of my dirt/grass hunting (which I hardly do anymore) I don't feel like there's much of a "drop-off" if I have to go to my backup detectors.

What a great story and one that you will always remember. All treasure hunters should be so lucky. What's that saying?..."Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while."

Congrats on the sweet gold! I always wonder where the missing diamonds are and if it is worth the effort to try and find them?

Great job - congrats on the recovery! Looks like platinum? You are a better man than I as I was offered $100 once for a return and didn't hesitate to accept it. I agree. Many years ago I took $100 for a ring recovery. I drove an hour to get to the beach at midnight to take advantage of the low tide. It took about an hour to find the ring. I split the $100 with my friend who told me the lost ring details. Right or wrong I'm sure I considered the persons apparent ability to pay the $100.

Thanks Strick, I agree. This year I found some nice RayBans that I use regularly and this knife will be put to good use as well! Thanks VL, It wasn't as productive as beach hunting has been recently but it was a nice fill-in until the next big swell. Thanks Jim, The silver ring is actually pretty nice. I now know that there is some gold there waiting to be found so that may be the best thing about this hunt.

Thanks for finding that Plat! However, I'm actually surprised that it costs so little. It is such a beautiful and well made little knife.

I've come back down to earth a bit after my marathon hunts due to Hurricane Kay. A friend of mine and I hit a local lake yesterday and even though I found 6 rings, none were gold. One of them was a nice silver "good luck" ring adorned with symbols such as a 4-leaf clover, horseshoe, elephant, old man and number "13" (?) but the best find IMO was a small pocket knife. It was a bit tarnished but showed no signs of rust or wear. It has a "Damascus" style blade and walnut inlays below ornate brass castings. It cleaned up very easily with WD40 and elbow grease. I'm always looking for gold but I often find other items that are just as valuable to me and this is one of them. GL&HH!

Congrats Strick - what an awesome find! That is some fancy Quinceanera jewelry. I'm happy for you getting away from work to get in some treasure hunting - your patience was rewarded!

Probably more like 400 quarters ($100). I agree with that strategy in certain situations. I recently hunted 2 days in a row after heavy beach erosion, skipping pennies, dimes and quarters. At first, it was hard to pass over those targets but I got over it when the gold started showing up.

That Claddagh ring is a beauty - congrats!!!

Nice variety of finds Mitchell - bring on the next big swells!

Thanks VL, Lakes, swimming holes and rivers can be good for jewelry finds. You must have some of those around(?) Thanks Rick, Just to be clear, these finds are from several hunts during an 8-9 day stretch. Thank you Mitchell, Target-rich hunts always seem so surreal to me and seeing treasure in the scoop - magical! It's a pleasure to share pictures of my finds with people that understand the hobby.

Congrats on that beauty Gerry. Some of those larger diamond rings have laser inscriptions on the center stone girdle. They are hard to read without a good jewelers loupe but it might be worth checking out.

I already posted my gold finds from Hurricane Kay but there were some interesting silver finds as well. The most valuable silver find was another silver Gucci "ghost" ring. I say another because I found a similar ring on August 1st. I also found a Tiffany ring and earring on back to back hunts at 2 different beaches. Maybe someone here has found an earring like this and is willing to sell? The 2 silver bracelets were found in the same area on different days. They are both from Taxco Mexico. Could the same person have lost both??? The last picture show a few more small silver items. The coin-like objects were probably earrings or other jewelry and the hoops or pins just wore/broke off over time. GL&HH!

Thanks Strick, Yes, I will always remember this past week. Well, I haven't been back to the beach that produced the most finds but some parts of that beach started filling in on Monday.

Thanks VL, The reason why I had such a good week of detecting was because Mother Nature gave us a hurricane swell which corresponded with some extreme tides so a lot of sand was moved around. I could go back to the beach tomorrow and not find much of anything and that happens more often than not. Keep us posted if you do decide to come out this way.

Thanks midalake, I really learned a lot this week. One of those things was which scoop to use when there are so many shallow targets. For a while I used an old style french fry basket like we used 50 years ago before long handled scoops were produced. While harder on the back they are so quick and efficient in target recovery that allowed me to cover a lot of ground quickly.

Thanks Mitchell, Fortunately, I saw some pretty good surf action on one the beach cams that led me to one location. The other productive beach I just stumbled upon. I did find a lot of coins and a couple of silver rings with the Nox but even with reduced sensitivity it took a lot of concentration to pick out repeating signals. My pulse detectors seemed a better fit for the conditions this week.

Thanks Cal, I think that is one of my favorite finds this week. The color seems a little light to be a sapphire (almost a dark turquoise). Also, I don't if the ring is old or just an old style design. It has very little wear and is only stamped "14K". (???)

Thanks Ron! I think it was the case of everything coming together - locations, times, equipment, tactics and luck, of course.

Hurricane Kay was wonderful to me! Prior to Kay I was having a very slow year for gold finds but she changed all that in 1 week. I know that Kay was not so good for LA County beaches but, as Strick pointed out, a few beaches down south had massive amounts of sand movement making for some ideal hunting conditions. I think I hunted about 6 nights in the last 8 days and even though I encountered several other hunters, there were enough targets to go around. I found an amazing number of gold jewelry items but most were below 2 grams and nothing even close to being a "honker". Many targets were hiding in and around the black sand making them more difficult to find, even with my pulse detectors. On one hunt I used my Equinox but the black sand was making the Nox so chatty that I was getting a headache. My Nox's TID's were pretty useless as virtually all targets registered as negative numbers until I got them out of the holes. I am helping a couple of friends who are getting started in metal detecting and, fortunately, they were both able to experience hunting in a target rich environment. However, every time I went to the beach this past week I did not know what to expect - I either anticipated the beach to be sanded back in or full of holes from hunters who got there before me. GL&HH!

You are right about most of the SoCal beaches not being oriented to take advantage of the SE swell angle. Fortunately, as Strick pointed out, Hurricane Kay moved lots of sand at a few beaches farther south and created some ideal detecting conditions.

Some cool looking finds Mitchell - congrats! I've been out the last few nights as well and am feeling it today. I'm hoping that hurricane Kay shakes the local beaches up this week!

Wow, what an awesome ring Jerry - congrats!!! 😮