Not all metal detectors will find a very small gold earring. If you decide to buy your own detector to find the missing earring be sure and take the matching earring along and see if the detector you choose will pick it up. I hunted a small diamond earring for a teacher at the local elementary school. When I checked out the mate to the missing earring, I found that none of my detectors would pick it up more than 2 inches away from the coil. The surprising thing was my inexpensive Tesoro Compadre worked about as well as anything. The frequency the detector runs at has a lot to do with how well they detect gold. Low frequency detectors are less sensitive to gold than high frequency ones. Good luck finding your earring. If I didn't live a couple thousand miles away, I'd be glad to try and find it for you.