November 21st, 2009 by Brad Lovell

Yesterday I was checking my phone messages and I seemed to have missed a phone call from a gentleman by the name of John. According to the voice message John had left, his good friend Lisa lost her wedding ring whilst body boarding in the surf at Maroubra Beach. After returning the phone  call to John, I was honest with him and mentioned recovery of lost rings in the surf are very difficult. In fact, from memory I have only ever successfully recovered one ring in the surf. John was aware that the chances of recovery we’re low, but as always I was up for the challenge. After arriving at Maroubra Beach later that afternoon, I began asking Lisa questions about how she lost the ring. I thought she may have been conscious of the exact moment the ring fell off her finger, but unfortunately this was not the case. Although, she was 100% confident she had the ring on while in the water, and by the time she left the water the ring was gone. The only positive to this whole situation was the ring was lost at high tide, and by the time I arrived the tide was low. I had John and Lisa engrave markings in the sand as to the approximate area Lisa had been body boarding. Since the tide was low, I started my search in the deeper area first…slowly working my way back to the shore line. Being a warm day, the beach was very crowded…and as always people continuously approached me asking what I was looking for. As luck would have it, the beach was incredibly clean. After about an hour of slowly griding the wet water with the metal detector I only received 2 decent signals. One being a pull tab, and the other a bottle cap. By the time I was in ankle deep water I was able to cover more ground without being pounded by waves. Not long after, the underwater metal  detector picked up a nice loud solid signal. I plunged the scoop into the sand and detected the same hole again. No more signal.. Cool I retrieved the signal in one scoop. After emptying the scoop full of sand I began searching with my fingers for what was creating the signal. I was a little disappointed when I caught a glimpse of silver in my eye. I was hoping for a gold wedding band. But after picking up this silver sand covered object, I realised it was definitely a ring! Not only was it a ring, it was a huge ring! The kind of ring that could choke an elephant!  I went back to my car and called Lisa. I asked her what the ring looked like, and she described the exact ring! A huge white gold ring, with a large diamond in the middle, and smaller diamonds curling around the band. I could hear the excitement in Lisa’s voice on the phone, and received a big hug when returning her ring. This is one of the perks of the job It was a pleasure to meet Lisa and John, and thanks for putting up with all my questions before the start of the search.

July 5th, 2009 by Brad Lovell

Similar picture, iPhone photo did not turn out well

Last night I drove out to a sports oval at Maroubra to help Amanda find her lost Diamond Earrings. Before her soccer game began, Amanda removed her Diamond Earrings and asked her friend to take care of them. Her friend put them in her pocket for safe keeping while Amanda played soccer. Unfortunately after the game was over, the earrings were no longer in her friend’s pocket. They obviously fell out while she was watching the game from the side line. After 4 people searched over an hour for the lost earrings, Amanda decided it was time to call me. I could not make it out to the Oval until night, but that turned out to be a blessing. After about an hour of searching the side line, I spotted a reflection from the light of my head lamp. I figured it was just another alluminum pull tab, and scanned the metal detector over the area. Oddly enough, there was no signal. This made me curious, so I pulled out my pinpointer and scanned area again. Once again, no signal. I got down close to the area and started parting the grass to the side. And there they were! Two beautiful diamond earrings! As it turns out, there was not enough gold content in the earrings to set off the metal detector, or the pinpointer.  It was just lucky that I had been there at night with the LED head lamp. I doubt I would have had any chance of finding the earrings in day light. Amanda (and her friend) we’re very happy to have the earring’s back. And Amanda, thank you kindly for a generous reward.

June 2nd, 2009 by Brad Lovell

The weather has been horrible here in Sydney for the past 2 weeks, which has resulted in a reduction of call outs. This is both good and bad…bad for my business, but good for my hobby. It has given me the chance to go out on a recreational treasure hunt. Myself and Tony from Metal Detector Services managed to have a good hunt at Maroubra Beach. The beach had been ravaged by the storms, with much of the sand blown up against the beach wall. The removed layers of sand gave our metal detectors the opportunity to reach deeper areas than normal. This resulted in us finding many lost rings. Some that looked like they had been lost for a very long time. We must have pulled close to 20 rings out in total. I have attached a photo of the 11 rings I found on the second day of hunting. If you have lost a ring at Maroubra beach in the past, and you have a photo of it..please send it to me and I will see if myself or Tony have found it.

April 19th, 2009 by Brad Lovell

I received a phone call yesterday from a gentleman who had lost his keys at Maroubra Beach. Before he went for a surf, he buried his keys in shallow sand, in a spot he figured he would remember. But when he returned, he was unable to locate where he buried the keys. After an hour of digging around, he decided to ask the Surf Life Saving club if there was anything they could do to help. Maroubra beach is the only beach I have delivered my promo leaflets to so far, so after a quick phone call I was on my way to find the lost keys. This was actually my first job at recovering keys. I always figured my services may be to expense to find keys. But when you think about it, the time and cost of getting new keys for the home and car, or changing locks can get very expensive. So a $50 call out fee, and me doing all the work to find them sounds like a better option Anyway, after about an half hour of grid searching the area…the keys we’re back in the owners hands. I apologize for not remembering the name of the gentleman who lost his keys…he had a very strong French accent which made it hard for me to understand.

March 1st, 2009 by Brad Lovell

I received a phone call from Stewart who lost his silver wedding band playing Volley Ball at Maroubra Beach. Luckily for Stewart, he found me via Google on his iPhone. Within a couple of hours I was down at Maroubra Beach ready to find his lost ring.  The Volley Ball Court had been dissasembled by the time I arrived, but you could still make out the area where it had been. Unfortunately Stewart was not aware of the exact moment the ring fell off his finger, but he was very confident it was while he was playing volley ball.  As we we’re working out what perimeter to cover, a truck which carried the Volley Ball equipment had been driving over the sand, in the area Stewarts ring was lost… This made me a little nervous, as the ring could be pushed deeper into the sand…but I guess these are just the extra challenges we face doing this type of work. I had quite a large area to cover, but thankfully Maroubra beach was very clean…so not too many junk signals we’re found. After about 50 minutes of searching, I found Stewarts ring. Interestingly, the ring had already buried itself about 5.5 inches deep according to the Detectors Display. I guess people jumping around and kicking sand buries things very fast. It was a pleasure to reunite Stewart with his Wedding Band