ENDED Contest! Most creative metal detecting story! (WINNERS UPDATE!)

REAL_RAT_FINK

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This contest is for the most creative story about a metal detecting find! Winner gets a PEACE dollar. If there are 20+ entries, I'll double it to 2 peace dollars.

Here are the rules: share a creative/fun/entertaining story about a find. The find must be a real find (pull tab, nail, gold coin, whatever went in your pouch) but the story or hunt should be fully embellished and creative. BEST STORY WINS. You don't have to be an experienced detectorist, just a good story teller :) Think along the lines of Mud Puppys posts or ???? More creative the better.

The stories will be judged by myself and my family. The contest begins now and ends midnight of May 30th. Let's see what you come up with. GOOD LUCK!
 
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I wrote a story like this years ago less than a week after I joined the forum but it wasn't a real find so...DISQUALIFIED!
Still, I bet your family would enjoy reading it, anyway.

https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=45852


I will endeavor to write about an actual find, I am sure I can come up with something.
This sort of thing is right up my alley.

Thanks for the fun contest!
 
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This contest is for the most creative story about a metal detecting find! Winner gets a PEACE dollar. If there are 20+ entries, I'll double it to 2 peace dollars.

Here are the rules: share a creative/fun/entertaining story about a find. The find must be a real find (pull tab, nail, gold coin, whatever went in your pouch) but the story or hunt should be fully embellished and creative. BEST STORY WINS. You don't have to be an experienced detectorist, just a good story teller :) Think along the lines of Mud Puppys posts or ???? More creative the better.

The stories will be judged by myself and my family. The contest begins now and ends midnight of May 30th. Let's see what you come up with. GOOD LUCK!


Cool idea! I suck at story telling so good luck everyone lol


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Pretty sure Mud could win this one. But it will be interesting seeing what people come up with.


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My first silvers

So when I first got into metal detecting my father in law bought me a bounty hunter so he and I could go out together. By the time I found my third or fourth clad coin I though I knew all there was to finding the good stuff! Well he lives in a older part of NC so we normally go down his way to hunt.

He had found a “old” football field that he swore we would find silver and gold so I grabbed my bounty hunter, my used pin pointer and hopped in the truck. We get down there to the field about 9 am, it’s already 80 degrees out and about 3 million mosquitos buzzing around but all I can see in my mind is shiny stuff.

Within about a hour I have found about 15 bottle caps, the keys to a minivan, some mean looking snake, a handful of tacks and one heck of a sunburn. I finally was over it when I fell over a scrape blade that the county had left from the previous winter to pick up and my FIL came over and told me he had forgotten that they had redid the ball field about ten years prior, taking about a foot off the top.

At this point I was to the point of selling the detector and all this !!!! and picking up the piano like my mother had wished I had done when Mike,(my father in law) said he wanted to scan the gravel parking lot that goes into a driveway next to the field. I told him that if he dug I would scan.

Like I said earlier I thought I knew all there was to detecting so I grab the trusty detector and go over to the driveway and start swinging. Two major things I learned that day: 1) listen to the tone more than relying on the numbers, and 2) bring extra batteries.

The first signal was showing iron mixed with a dime signal and I told mike not to even bother with it. The tone was sweet as pie though so he insisted on digging it. He dug the hole and pulled a round nail. I was about to say a fat I told you so when he raised his digging tool up to wipe it off when he saw the shiny Rosie hanging on for dear life! I was stoked he was not over joyed but he said to find another signal! The next and sadly the last signal of the day (batteries crapped out) was a rock solid 92. He walked over and started digging all while explaining to me not to get my hopes up that it was probably not gonna be good as shallow as it was and he goes and pops out a silver Washington quarter!

At this point HE is over it, I’m out of battery life, he gets in the Jeep and didn’t say a word the rest of the way back. All I got from him back at his house was “good job” and that he would never dig a hole for me again.

Anyway thanks for reading!
Gray


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Here's a true story from my area :

There was major storms that raked the coast of CA in the winter of 1982 to 1983. The beaches were all getting major erosion.

We had a club in my city at that time, with monthly meetings. And at the peak of those winter storms, at one of the meetings, a new couple showed up. They had just purchased a detector, and were attending their first meeting. At the front show & tell table were all sorts of gold rings and silver coins that we'd been getting from the beach storms that were going on right then.

The new couple absorbed everything they could, from the chit-chat going on in the room. And deduced what beach everyone was talking about. So the next day, they went to that beach, and joined several other club members. They watched the old pro's and quickly figured out how it all works. They ended that first day with something like 5 or 7 gold rings ! On their very first day detecting ! And the guys around them were doing equally as well. Needless to say, this new couple was quite satisfied with their new hobby :)

So they showed up the following day, and AGAIN had something like another 5 or so gold rings, and scores of silver coins !

On their 3rd day out, a friend of mine was pulling into the beach parking lot. He saw the new couple getting ready to leave the beach. So he talked to them to see how the action was. They told my buddy "It's no good today, we *only* got 3 gold rings". Doh !

They had just assumed that every day was going to be handfuls of gold rings and silver coins. Thus to them, I guess "3" was a "bad day", haha

After the winter storms ended that year, and all the beaches sanded back in, I guess they lost interest in the hobby, and we never saw them after that.
 
Many of us have been there. We unearth an exciting find. The gold and silver is shining back at us with a row of diamond teeth like a smile of happiness to see us. Overcome with joy, we think of how lucky we are to have found such a special item and how to introduce it into our lives. But then the question of who else this has touched. In whose heart would it have a more special place than our own? Now it is a goal of reuniting the lost with the loved. My mother would tell me stories of how she had lost her rings long ago.

She knew the general resting place of her lost items and it became a question of getting the means to recover them. Thus, I introduced myself to the White's M6! About 14 years ago I got into the hobby of metal detecting and thought to myself, “what a great rescue mission this could be!” The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to complete the challenge I had given myself. I set out to find my mother’s lost rings. This is her account of the story:

"27 years ago, in a silly fit of anger at my husband, I removed my wedding band along with an antique opal ring he had recently given to me. Yelling at him, I threw the rings out into the backyard of our first house in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The next day, I realized my actions and began to search frantically for the rings. Renting a metal detector, I attempted to find them with no luck! Years went by and I rarely thought about them, as all hope was lost.

My son, Ace, recently reintroduced me to metal detecting, joining a detecting club, and I purchased a metal detector of my own, a White's Coinmaster. Last month at the meeting, I was looking at the display of jewelry finds of the month and my eyes kept returning to an entry of 2 particular rings. I mentioned to several people that one of the rings looked just like my old wedding band and while the other ring was an opal, I could not recall it’s exact identity as it had been lost so long ago. I wanted to turn the card over so bad to see who had found the rings and I asked Ace if I should do that, but he told me not to since we had not voted yet.

After the voting and just before the break, Mike, the club president, who I also spoke with about the rings looking very familiar said, “a young lady came up to me earlier asking if it was possible to find out where the two rings were found and by whom.” He confused me at this point as he looked in my direction because at 58 years, I did not consider myself to be “young!” As I stood up realizing he was talking about me, I told my story of how I lost rings similar to those.

Next, he asked if the person who found the rings would also stand up to reveal themselves and information about the rings. I was sitting on the far left side of the room and the only person to my left was my son, Ace. I looked around the room and didn’t see anyone standing immediately until I turned around towards Ace, standing beside me! I could not believe he had done this for me! He’d heard the story through the years and had gone hunting at our old home, the one before he was even born, and found the rings the day before the meeting!

Ace and his father met me for dinner before the meeting that night in Plainwell. Apparently they had spoken on the phone the day before and both knew that the rings had been found and agreed to keep it a secret in order to arrange the surprise showing at the meeting. Needless to say, I thought it was the perfect way to return my lost rings! I am so grateful to Ace and so proud that he made the return such a special and fun experience!"


This experience was so fun for my family and myself. So next time you hit that wonderful find buried beneath the ground, think to yourself what you’d rather have… the find… or the story of a lifetime! I really want to thank everyone that helped make this possible! I’m so happy to have found a life long hobby and will hopefully get plenty of lifelong friends in the process!
 

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Many of us have been there. We unearth an exciting find. The gold and silver is shining back at us with a row of diamond teeth like a smile of happiness to see us. Overcome with joy, we think of how lucky we are to have found such a special item and how to introduce it into our lives. But then the question of who else this has touched. In whose heart would it have a more special place than our own? Now it is a goal of reuniting the lost with the loved. My mother would tell me stories of how she had lost her rings long ago.

She knew the general resting place of her lost items and it became a question of getting the means to recover them. Thus, I introduced myself to the White's M6! About 14 years ago I got into the hobby of metal detecting and thought to myself, “what a great rescue mission this could be!” The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to complete the challenge I had given myself. I set out to find my mother’s lost rings. This is her account of the story:

"27 years ago, in a silly fit of anger at my husband, I removed my wedding band along with an antique opal ring he had recently given to me. Yelling at him, I threw the rings out into the backyard of our first house in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The next day, I realized my actions and began to search frantically for the rings. Renting a metal detector, I attempted to find them with no luck! Years went by and I rarely thought about them, as all hope was lost.

My son, Ace, recently reintroduced me to metal detecting, joining a detecting club, and I purchased a metal detector of my own, a White's Coinmaster. Last month at the meeting, I was looking at the display of jewelry finds of the month and my eyes kept returning to an entry of 2 particular rings. I mentioned to several people that one of the rings looked just like my old wedding band and while the other ring was an opal, I could not recall it’s exact identity as it had been lost so long ago. I wanted to turn the card over so bad to see who had found the rings and I asked Ace if I should do that, but he told me not to since we had not voted yet.

After the voting and just before the break, Mike, the club president, who I also spoke with about the rings looking very familiar said, “a young lady came up to me earlier asking if it was possible to find out where the two rings were found and by whom.” He confused me at this point as he looked in my direction because at 58 years, I did not consider myself to be “young!” As I stood up realizing he was talking about me, I told my story of how I lost rings similar to those.

Next, he asked if the person who found the rings would also stand up to reveal themselves and information about the rings. I was sitting on the far left side of the room and the only person to my left was my son, Ace. I looked around the room and didn’t see anyone standing immediately until I turned around towards Ace, standing beside me! I could not believe he had done this for me! He’d heard the story through the years and had gone hunting at our old home, the one before he was even born, and found the rings the day before the meeting!

Ace and his father met me for dinner before the meeting that night in Plainwell. Apparently they had spoken on the phone the day before and both knew that the rings had been found and agreed to keep it a secret in order to arrange the surprise showing at the meeting. Needless to say, I thought it was the perfect way to return my lost rings! I am so grateful to Ace and so proud that he made the return such a special and fun experience!"


This experience was so fun for my family and myself. So next time you hit that wonderful find buried beneath the ground, think to yourself what you’d rather have… the find… or the story of a lifetime! I really want to thank everyone that helped make this possible! I’m so happy to have found a life long hobby and will hopefully get plenty of lifelong friends in the process!
What a story! Thanks for sharing!
 
Custom ring, twice lost, twice found

During Viet Nam this now old detectorist belonged to the US Navy. After Boot Camp, I was assigned to Dental Technician school where my demonstrated manual dexterity qualified me to be further trained as a Prosthetic Technician. I could carve wax (crowns-n-bridges) with the very best of em. If you are familiar with the trade/process, the carved wax is used in making a mold and later filled (poured) with a precious metal. In those days...GOLD. Dental gold ~ 18 carat. As you might have guessed, we technicians carved many a ring and ear rings for Dental Officer's wives/girlfriends.

Well...while stationed in the beautiful Republic of the Philippines (think tropical paradise...swaying palm trees, clear blue water, etc., etc.) I cast my wife a very attractive gold piece of finger candy. It goes without saying (ahemm) she did (still does) cherish it more than her wedding ring.

FIRST LOSS:

Long story short - several years later (say 45) we went Christmas shopping with our grown kids to a very large mall. Visited numerous stores, tried on several pieces of attire and eventually ate out. Arrived home around 10 PMish and just before retiring for the day, the wife comes to me in tears. Whimpering she blurts, "You're going to kill me...I lost your (her) ring".

After comforting her, I began thinking I'll have to try and re-visit every shop, ask for the manager and explain I'm looking for a lost gold ring...as if it's finder would even turn it in. Later, while trying to go to sleep, I tried to imagine how I might remake the ring...without the necessary tools, oven and casting equipment, not to mention the gold.

FIRST FIND:

Awoke the next morning and had a moment of enlightenment...'Go check the back seat of the car and the ground next to the drive way.' Maybe it came off in the car and "squished" outside when she slid out. Stupidly took my pin pointer with me, as if (?) it would somehow discriminate the metal in the car and it's seats while it did it's job, pointing to her precious ring.

Miraculously, upon opening the rear door - there sat the ring, majestically awaiting my prying eyes. Got a bear hug and hot kiss for my effort.

SECOND LOSS:

Five or so years later, wife had a routine, mid-afternoon Doctor's appt. Afterwards, we went out for dinner and then returned home. About thirty minutes pass and I hear a very feminine screech from the bed room. Yeah. It's gone missing again.

SECOND FIND:

Now dark, I drive the 20 or so miles back to the Clinic remembering exactly where we had parked. I slowly pulled up and stopped just short of the handicapped spot where we had parked four or five hours earlier. With the headlights on, I got out and strolled in front of the car. Oh, Heck Yeah...there it lay on the ground awaiting my return. Nearly ran over it. Couldn't believe my, no OUR luck! More hugs and kisses...but, today...she refuses to wear it.

Sorry, its not the MD type story you expected...BUT, it was metal (GOLD in fact) and I had to find (detect) the darn thing TWICE!!! For you Statisticians...what are the odds? Top that. ;)
 
During Viet Nam this now old detectorist belonged to the US Navy. After Boot Camp, I was assigned to Dental Technician school where my demonstrated manual dexterity qualified me to be further trained as a Prosthetic Technician. I could carve wax (crowns-n-bridges) with the very best of em. If you are familiar with the trade/process, the carved wax is used in making a mold and later filled (poured) with a precious metal. In those days...GOLD. Dental gold ~ 18 carat. As you might have guessed, we technicians carved many a ring and ear rings for Dental Officer's wives/girlfriends.

Well...while stationed in the beautiful Republic of the Philippines (think tropical paradise...swaying palm trees, clear blue water, etc., etc.) I cast my wife a very attractive gold piece of finger candy. It goes without saying (ahemm) she did (still does) cherish it more than her wedding ring.

FIRST LOSS:

Long story short - several years later (say 45) we went Christmas shopping with our grown kids to a very large mall. Visited numerous stores, tried on several pieces of attire and eventually ate out. Arrived home around 10 PMish and just before retiring for the day, the wife comes to me in tears. Whimpering she blurts, "You're going to kill me...I lost your (her) ring".

After comforting her, I began thinking I'll have to try and re-visit every shop, ask for the manager and explain I'm looking for a lost gold ring...as if it's finder would even turn it in. Later, while trying to go to sleep, I tried to imagine how I might remake the ring...without the necessary tools, oven and casting equipment, not to mention the gold.

FIRST FIND:

Awoke the next morning and had a moment of enlightenment...'Go check the back seat of the car and the ground next to the drive way.' Maybe it came off in the car and "squished" outside when she slid out. Stupidly took my pin pointer with me, as if (?) it would somehow discriminate the metal in the car and it's seats while it did it's job, pointing to her precious ring.

Miraculously, upon opening the rear door - there sat the ring, majestically awaiting my prying eyes. Got a bear hug and hot kiss for my effort.

SECOND LOSS:

Five or so years later, wife had a routine, mid-afternoon Doctor's appt. Afterwards, we went out for dinner and then returned home. About thirty minutes pass and I hear a very feminine screech from the bed room. Yeah. It's gone missing again.

SECOND FIND:

Now dark, I drive the 20 or so miles back to the Clinic remembering exactly where we had parked. I slowly pulled up and stopped just short of the handicapped spot where we had parked four or five hours earlier. With the headlights on, I got out and strolled in front of the car. Oh, Heck Yeah...there it lay on the ground awaiting my return. Nearly ran over it. Couldn't believe my, no OUR luck! More hugs and kisses...but, today...she refuses to wear it.

Sorry, its not the MD type story you expected...BUT, it was metal (GOLD in fact) and I had to find (detect) the darn thing TWICE!!! For you Statisticians...what are the odds? Top that. ;)

Awesome story of loss and find. One of my favorites so far!
 
I was metal detecting a local park when I found a female class ring attached to a chain. It was a local high school and the ring had the initials of the owner inside the band. I went to the school records to look for females from the 2014 graduating class (the graduation year on the ring) that had the initials inside the band. There was only one girl on the list with this initials. I ended up doing research and found the mothers phone number. She got in contact with her daughter who called me to say she never lost her ring but she knows someone else who did lose their class ring and she had the same initials. Turns out the owner of the ring bought the ring before she graduated and ended up graduating a year early meaning her ring has a different graduating year than the year she actually graduated. She said she lost it while running in a cross country match through the park and thought she would never see it again. We set up a time to meet at a local Walmart later in the day. I left a little early to make sure I wasn't late and on my way there I noticed something in the road and decided to stop my car and check it out. It ended up being an iPhone! It was locked so I couldn't call the owner so I put it in my pocket with the intentions of taking it to the Verizon store after I returned the ring to see if they could get in contact with the owner. I got to Walmart about 20 minutes early and decided to check out a garage sale I saw just around the corner. While I was there I found some floor mats that matched the make and model of car that I drove and I needed new ones because mine where pretty bad. I ended up deciding on waiting and went back to Walmart and returned the ring! She was so excited. On my way back I decided to swing back buy the garage sale and buy those floor mats. While I was there the phone I found started ringing so I answered it but the person on the other end wasn't listening to their phone because they were listening for the phone that I found to ring! I'm yelling into the phone at this point hoping they'll hear me and put the phone up to their ear so I can tell them that I found their phone! That's when we both realized we were both at the same garage sale! The owner had been there earlier and left their phone on top of their car and drove away. They had returned to the garage sale and were looking for it on the ground. Crazy part is that I found it five miles from the garage sale! So in one day I found the ring, returned it after a crazy search to find the owner due to the incorrect year on the ring, found an iPhone, went to a garage sale to buy floor mats and ended up finding the owner of the phone that I found at the garage sale!

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Back when the White's Vision/V3 came out, I bought one and decided to take it to a local park for testing. It was a modern park, built in the 1980s; but I didn't care, it was close to home, and I just wanted to learn the machine.

It was a very hot day, and the dirt was rock hard. Digging any target was frustrating. Eventually I hit at +53 or so, at about 3 inches, which in that ballpark on that machine was most certainly a zincoln.

Whatever, I don't dig shallow zincoln signals, especially in miserable conditions, but I was learning the machine, so I dug, and out pops my 1800 VF/XF half dime. Beautiful condition, and to this day, still my best and most valuable find.

You can do all the research you want (and I do plenty), and you still never know. Park was filled and graded when built, so it wasn't even the old, undisturbed land.
 
Twofer.

My wife and I were heading to the port to hop on a cruise ship to celebrate our 43rd anniversary. I was just about to turn my phone off for 4 days when it rang. I answered it and a man named John was tearfully asking for me.

John had lost his wedding ring and his 48th anniversary was approaching and he HAD to have that ring back. I explained that I would be gone for a few days but told him when to call me and he promised sincerely that he would. After he hung up I turned my phone off. Don’t want any expensive transatlantic calls for the next few days.

Four days later we returned and I turned my phone on and it immediately started ringing. It was John. He continued begging me to find his ring. I promised I’d be at his house the next day.

The next day I arrived and he eagerly accompanied he as I searched. He carried my tools and watched everything I did. But after 6 hours of hard hunting I was worn out and unable to continue. The ring apparently was not there.

I don’t know who was more disappointed. He or I.

The next day all I could think of was how sad John was that I could not find his ring. It was so obvious how much he loves him wife, Patty. I also have a devoted wife and I could imagine how important that ring would be.

I woke up the following morning devoted to going back and finding that ring.

I packed up most of my machines and drove the hour it takes to his house. I hunted high and I hunted low. I used different machines and different techniques but no ring. Six hours later I was admitting defeat.

Almost.

The area where he most thought the ring might be has a steep slope. Hard to stand over and hard to swing. So I got on my knees to stabilize myself and did a two handed swing and finally got a strange weak signal. I pinpointed and stuck my finger deep in the soil and snagged his ring. He must have stepped on it and drove it very deep.

I was his hero.

We became friends.

As a thank you he gave me permission to hunt a 70 acre property that is nearly 100 miles away. There is a lot of history there but I spent most of my time cleaning up the ground round his cabin. Lots of spent bullets, rusty nails and a gold ring.

A ring that looked exactly like the first one I had retrieved. I called his wife and asked her if she had lost a ring and she said no BUT JOHN HAD. I explained I had already found that ring and she told me I had found his second ring. THE FIRST RING HAD BEEN LOST OVER 30 YEARS BEFORE. He had always believed he had lost it at the high school his kids attended, 30 miles in the other direction.

I told her it was coming home. 30 years and over 100 miles away, it was coming home.

And then a UFO landed at my house and explained their leader had lost a ring and I needed to find it for them.

I added the last paragraph because you wanted a made up ending. Everything prior was true.
 

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When I was a kid about 8 years old I started collecting coins.
This was 1963, and I was given a 1938-1961 nickel book and and 2 one cent books...1909-1940 and 1941-1965, and then I tried to fill them.

I looked for coins in all the change I got and every year my grandparents, who never had much money, would go to the bank and get a lot of cent rolls and then unwrap them and throw them all in an old cigar box, fill it 1/2 the way up and give that to me as a birthday present.
It was heavy and filled with coins to go through and I filled many spaces in my books because of this and I loved them for it.
Thinking about it I was actually doing coin roll hunting way before anyone ever coined the term and also way before many of you were ever born.

I managed to fill up about 1/2 my nickel book, all of my late date penny book except for 2 spots and and a little over 1/3 of the early date Lincoln penny book which I think was pretty good considering the way I was doing it.

Before long in a few years I eventually lost interest and put these books away.
Sometimes you just carry a few certain things through life and these books actually stayed with me throughout the years and all the moves and I still have them.

After I got into metal detecting I always had hope that one day I might find a coin in the ground that would fill a space in one of my books.
In this hobby I have now found several old nickels and quite a few wheat pennies and even though some of those were actually better condition than the ones already in my collection they were still all doubles and so I continued to look...and wait.


A few years ago I was hunting at a park and there are still 2 old houses on the site that are due to be knocked down sometime in the future.
In the back of one there is still one old rusted clothesline pole and I hunted behind this looking for old coins.
Never found any but this park has been hunted by others.
That day I tried hunting on the other side of that pole where there is a slight slope and I did not believe this was the direction the other end of the lines were strung but evidently they were because I found a 1935 wheatie buried there.

Cut to the next morning, and I had a thought to look in my early cent book on the off chance that this one would fill a space but I had no luck so far so I wasn't holding out hope.
Guess what?
There on page 3 was a space that said 1935 and no coin filled that hole!

Joy!

This is not a huge find, it is just an old wheat cent and one that is not even in all that great shape, either, but I can't tell you how strangely satisfied and happy this find makes me and the warm feeling it evokes when I think about this cent, the no longer empty hole in my collector book...and my grandparents.
All the learning, all the digging, all the trash and everything I have gone through up to this point for so many years has led to this...and it was all worth it and then some.

The gold and silver and other great finds count for sure but sometimes, in life, it is the little victories that count more than the big kind...the smaller personal ones that are only important to you.
This is one of those.

This is such a great hobby that can make me feel so happy over this little thing after such a long, long time.
Life is good!
 

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