March 21st, 2010 by Brad Lovell

Last night I received a phone call from Alex. He had been playing volley ball the previous day at Manly Beach, and lost his wedding ring while diving for the ball. Knowing Manly beach is constantly hunted by other metal detector guys, I told Alex I would finish my dinner and head straight out there. Alex showed me the area he had been playing volley ball, and the direction he believed the ring to fall. We squared off a search area with a large safety  buffer, and began the search. After an hour of slowly covering an extended area I was starting to worry. But there was one positive sign, I was getting lots of targets including coins…which is an indication that the area has not already been hunted out by another metal detector man (or lady). It was time to begin searching the other side of the volley ball area. Although Alex did not beleive the ring was dropped in this area, you just never know where rings can end up. After about 5 minutes of searching the new area, I got a nice strong signal which would normally indicate a 50 cent coin. This signal can also indicate a large gold ring. After locating the target with my pinpointer, I caught a glimpse of gold between the sand. This glimpse of gold was indeed a gold wedding ring. I handed the ring to Alex who right away said that was his wedding ring. After a quick text message to his wife, I took this photo of a relieved Alex and the ring with my iPhone.

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