A First for Me

Numil

Elite Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2014
Messages
1,624
Location
The Island of Honolulu
I've found my fair share of rings over the years including gold ones! Never did I suspect that I would find a high karat item. Before I get ahead of myself I'll segway back to where it all started, the beach.

I was in knee deep water after some big surf had tossed a lot of sand around. Most beaches were cut pretty deep of just missing a couple feet of sand from the entire beach. Then my Nox 800 sounds off with a very high pitch tone and I immediately think "silver". I look at the readout and I get an unwavering 30. Not 29, not 31... a solid 30. Took a couple of scoops with my stealth i720 but finally got the target out from about 8 inches of the sand. The ring is gold and a brilliant buttery gold so I'm thinking "gotta be gold plated silver".

Back at the truck I get out the loop I keep with me and look for any identifying marks. Only thing I see inside is PNG (the manufacturer) and 958 stamped both large and small inside the ring. A search online doesn't bring up much about 958 stamps so I let the acid testing help me out. Scratching the ring on the ceramic slate is easy, too easy as I can tell its really soft. Now comes the acid test and I'll me damned. I've never uncorked the 22K acid for testing before but today was a day of firsts. It held, I mean it actually held the 22K acid test with easy!

I still have doubts so I try dividing 23K by 24 K so see what the decible answer it. Sure enough 23K equates to 958. But still there's a lingering doubt so i take the ring to the lab at school and do a specific gravity test. The scale reads in 100th's of a gram and the ring weights 7.03g and I come up with a 18.4 as a final number. Pure gold is 19.3 so I'm def in the ball park. Its gold! I got a theory as to where it came from and why such high purity but that's for a later story.

The other pic is what I pulled out of the sand in January, 2 small plat rings and some silver. But I found gold and I'm on the board for the year.

Happy Hunting and Good Luck out there.
 

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:dingding: It doesn't get much yellower than that! Congrats!
 
Wow!!! That is a special find right there. I've found one small 22k ring and that's it for the over 18K finds in decades of detecting. Thanks for the info on the Nox TID. I would have never expected a "30" to be a gold ring. :wow:
 
23-24K is such a beautiful/rich color! Still looking for my first solid gold ring, other than a white gold wedding band I retrieved for a guy that had lost it in his back yard!

Congratulations on your success!
 
As everyone else is saying: It doesn't get any yellower than that ! Nice.
 
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