14K Gold Ring - Favorite Find YTD

Of all the finds so far this year, my favorite is a 14K gold band.  This is the reason I dig up all those pop pull-tabs.  To a metal detector, pull-tabs, nickels, and gold rings look the same.  This one happened to be about 6 or 7 inches deep, so it had been there a while.  I bet the ring had been there for at least 40 years, but the wonderful thing about gold is it comes out of the ground looking brand new.

In My Absence - Dad's MD Finds

I have not had the metal detector out for over a week now, but my dad has been out swinging.  Here are some of his finds.  He complains about not being able to get up and down, but from what I see here, he is doing pretty good.

Detecting Dog

Dallas, my dog, is smarter than the average dog.  When I ask her if she wants to go metal detecting she barks and gets all excited.  She loves to come along and smell what the other dogs have been doing at the park.  When my dad has other plans, she is always glad to fill in.  On Saturdays my dad and I usually stop for lunch, but one lucky Saturday Dallas got to fill in.  We stopped by In & Out Drive-In.  The helpful person taking the order suggested I could get her a meat patty without salt for $.70 and so we did, and she loved it.

Birthday Present for the Detectorist

Last week I got a text from my friend's wife.

"Happy Birthday", she said.

"It's not my birthday, but tomorrow is my wedding anniversary", I replied.  I thought it was a nice try even if it was not my birthday.

Later that day, while I was at work, my friend gave me a card that had been opened.  The card originally wished me a happy birthday, but had "birthday" crossed out and replaced with "anniversary."  In the card they acknowledged my love for metal detecting and suggested that I check my front lawn.

Turns out that they had sprinkled my yard with little metal objects for me to find.  How nice.  The said part was that my nephew had already gathered most of the up while he was mowing my lawn.  Oh well, I appreciated the gesture.  Next time sprinkle some old coins in too.  :)

Items picked up off the lawn

Lost Wedding Ring Found

Last summer I got a call from a friend who needed some help to find his wedding ring.  He had been working in his back yard and threw something and his ring went flying off his finger.  He heard it hit a branch of a small fruit tree.  He search for it but could not find it.  Of course I was glad to help search for it, why not I love that kind of thing.  It only took 15 to 20 minutes before I located it.  If I can help you find something, let me know.

Competition Continues - Week 3

The metal detecting competition works like this, recovered objects are worth points:  Garbage is worth the least amount of points, then junk jewelry, next is modern coinage, silver jewelry, old coinage (the older the better), gold jewelry, and gold coinage, and finally gold jewelry with mounted diamonds is worth the most points.  So far we haven't had to worry about points for gold coins or jewelry with diamonds.
I thought I had a strong showing at the end of our Saturday hunt.  I had managed to find a dog rabies tag, a 5 year pin, some junk jewelry, a good pile of modern coins and my 3 wheat pennies.
Dad had a respectable amount of coins, and he found a nice little silver CTR ring.  The competition was going to be close, until a "V" nickel was discovered in his pile of coins.  Dad takes it again.

A "V" trumps 3 wheat pennies

I want to find older coins.  It used to be if the coins were deeper than three inches I would just leave them.  Now I want to find coins that are deeper because the deeper you go the older they are.  Now because I am hunting in public parks I usually don't find any old coins, but Saturday I pulled three wheat pennies out of the same hole.  They were about six inches deep.  I was feeling pretty good about my coins until I started looking at my Dad's finds.  He had a nickel that was so dirty it showed no detail at all.  I rinsed it and took a look at it with the magnifying glass and could barely make out a 907.  The placement of the date was different than both the Jefferson and Buffalo nickels.  A quick Google search reveal the nickel to be a 1907 "V" nickel.  That was exciting!  Brushing the coin with my toothbrush and water eventually removed most of the dirt.  I would have to say this nickel was way better than my three wheat pennies.