Gold and a whole lotta diamonds!

D

DIGGER27

New member
Hey all.
Something just happened to me last Friday that I just have to share.

Some background...
I hunt with a Vaquero, a Compadre and an F2.
I have been doing this 3 years as of next month, love to dig anything and everything, but jewelry is my game.
I have concentrated on all jewelry, but like most, I especially love to find gold.

Last August on 2 successive hunts at a park site right next to a basketball court I had a mind blowing experience.
I dug not one, or two but three gold rings.
All were trash signals, (foil, tab, tab) and digging trash has been something I have been recommending to most others for awhile.
One of those rings was 14k and had a decent size diamond in the middle and I liked it so much I had it re-sized and I wear it today, a smaller heart ring my wife loves and I get to see it when I look at her hand.

The absolute greatest experience I have had in this great hobby...till now.

Last Friday I was at another park and I was thrilled to be digging anything because the last hunt I had was in two large and open parks where the wind and colder temps had caused the dirt to freeze several inches deep and it was no fun trying to dig in soil like that at all.
I thought I was done for the winter and I was depressed, but it got back into the 50's that day and I tried one more park that was a little more sheltered from the wind and I hoped the soil was better...and it was.
I hunted around that site for awhile and eventually got around to the area in this park with a structure that eventually became my favorite place to hunt....another basketball court.

The other site where I found those three rings I had hunted it before but with bigger coils and I found those rings by switching to the sniper coil on my F2 and digging all signals including trash.
This site was the same.
I hunted around this court once before, but now I had my sniper instead of a larger coil.
10 minutes after hunting around a sideline, and after I dug a few tab and trash signals, I came across a nice tone that was a 32 on my F2.
This is a nickel, number, but actually not a usual and real nickel number which is usually a 33.
This 32 was, however, the same as several sta-tabs that I had already dug at this park.
I'm digging it anyway...so glad I did.
2 down in the side of the small plug was the band of a silver looking ring.
I pulled it out of the plug and when I turned it to the front I saw 4 diamonds staring at me just sparkling away in the sunlight.
I knocked the dirt out of middle and by using some magnifying power to help my old eyes I saw exactly what I hoped to see...14k.
I was shocked!
This was my very first white gold ring ever, and what a beauty!
6.7 grams of the real deal, and I had the diamonds tested over the weekend and they also are real, but even then before testing I knew.
Nothing shines like these rocks did in the sun except the real thing.
Get this.
I took it home and cleaned it up and had another surprise waiting for me.
I looked closer at those diamonds after a little cleaning and I almost fell off my chair when I saw separating those four beautiful diamonds were...more diamonds!
Five lovely baguettes all lined up nice and pretty.

I thought nothing could top those two hunts last August when I found those 3 gold rings...I was wrong.

The greatest find of my short career and even though it is gold ring # 14 for me, it is by far the very best one.
I would consider it the find of a lifetime, and I hope some other great and maybe nicer things are in store for me, but even if that never comes to pass, this will do.

Now to get it appraised and hopefully sold.
I have the itch to buy a new detector, I think I might have the best way to pay for it right in front of me.

HH
 

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Great story and a beautiful ring! :loveit:

Congrats on the amazing find, and keep up the great work finding those rings! |:confused:)
 
:shocked04:stretcher: :wow: what a looker that ring is :perfect10: :perfect10: very sweet ring
 
Nice find! thumbsup01 Here in the frozen north, it is nice to see someone making great finds! :perfect10: I will have to wait for the spring thaw go get out again.
 
What a glorious day for you! Such a beauty :perfect10: Big gratz to ya and let us know how the appraisal goes :crossfingers:
 
Awesome! :cool: Your determination with the junk signals encourages me. With 2012 as my first year of detecting seriously I did mostly coin shooting. Makes me wonder if I swung right over gold. :shocked01: I did dig over 300 nickels, but sometimes passed on the close to nickel signals that I thought were going to be junk.
I'll have to open up my discrimination a little more on the jewelry end too. :grin:
Keep up the good work & may 2013 bring you lots o' gold! :yes:
 
JdsCoins link=topic=12358.msg132540#msg132540 date=1359050353 said:
Awesome! :cool: Your determination with the junk signals encourages me. With 2012 as my first year of detecting seriously I did mostly coin shooting. Makes me wonder if I swung right over gold. :shocked01: I did dig over 300 nickels, but sometimes passed on the close to nickel signals that I thought were going to be junk.
I'll have to open up my discrimination a little more on the jewelry end too. :grin:
Keep up the good work & may 2013 bring you lots o' gold! :yes:
Click to expand...

Since I am in this for the exercise as much as the finds, I never worried about digging too much trash.
Also, as far as trash signals go, I have found several silver chains and necklaces and most of them come in as foil on up...the clasps do, anyway.
Plus zinc.
Don't get me started on my feelings when I read that some guys don't want to waste their time digging zinc signals.
A thick men's silver bracelet, a rare huge 1922 merchant's token and several other great targets came out of the ground for me that were lowly zinc signals...along with enough zincolns when cashed in takes the wife and I out to some very nice dinners.

Regarding gold...
Here is a picture of every piece of gold I have dug since I started in this hobby in mid Feb 2010.

3 class rings were all lower zinc signals like some larger can slaw.
1 was a high tab signal just below zinc.
2 were definite tab signals
2 were nickel signals but just above my usual real nickel numbers like many tabs.
3 were nickel signals again, but just below my usual real nickel numbers and again like many tabs.
3 were smaller or thinner and came in as foil signals from low to high.
1 chain the clasp comes in as iron.

As you can see every one came in as a trash signal.
Even though some of them were in the coin areas like nickel or zinc pennies, in reality even those were in areas and numbers that usually meant trash.
Every one of these were a surprise when I dug them, and a thrill when I saw what they really were.

This is why I do this and why I made my mind up long ago to dig as much trash as I could stand.
Sometimes it seems like I can hardly remember my name, but I can actually remember every feeling that I felt on every one of these finds at the instant I dug them just like they happened 30 seconds ago.
I love that thrilling feeling, I am addicted to it and I want to feel it again and again.

I have dug probably way more than my share of trash in my relatively short time in this hobby, but I look at this pic and have absolutely no regrets.
 

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Great informative post! :)

I always dig zinc signals that are below 2 because you just never know. If It's a solid signal it could easily be a worn wheat penny, small silver, you name it! The only time I skip them is if I'm in a place that's littered with surface zincs. Last year I dug a sterling earring that weighed only 4 tenths of a gram. Rang up a perfect nickel. When I travel to spots a bit away from home and time is limited I focus on the older coins, so I skip most common trash signals and surface penny/dime signals. But when I stay local and have time and energy to burn I'll dig everything that beeps (except for iron)

I was very interested to see the spot in your post about what all those different rings rang up as. That was very helpful for me. I know I'll eventually find my first gold. I just want to increase my odds this year by digging the sketchy signals that I know are not nickels. ;)
 
JdsCoins link=topic=12358.msg132573#msg132573 date=1359083375 said:
Great informative post! :)

I always dig zinc signals that are below 2 because you just never know. If It's a solid signal it could easily be a worn wheat penny, small silver, you name it! The only time I skip them is if I'm in a place that's littered with surface zincs. Last year I dug a sterling earring that weighed only 4 tenths of a gram. Rang up a perfect nickel. When I travel to spots a bit away from home and time is limited I focus on the older coins, so I skip most common trash signals and surface penny/dime signals. But when I stay local and have time and energy to burn I'll dig everything that beeps (except for iron)

I was very interested to see the spot in your post about what all those different rings rang up as. That was very helpful for me. I know I'll eventually find my first gold. I just want to increase my odds this year by digging the sketchy signals that I know are not nickels. ;)
Click to expand...


Glad I can post anything that can help another hunter find something great.

300 nickels is fantastic, and I don't know what you are swinging but I have 3 detectors and I can tell you that out of all the coins nickels seem to be the least right on as far as readings on all 3 of my machines.
With my F2 a 33 is the perfect nickel number, but I have dug them from foil on up into tabs and one I even dug that was a low zinc number.
Still can't figure that one out.
On my Tesoros nickels should disc out right at the nickel mark on my disc, but I can tell you I have dug a ton that were below that mark and a few that were higher.
All those signals around that nickel mark that you thought were trash...who knows what they really were.
Looking at my gold targets I have dug them all over from iron to zinc...but the highest percentage of them came in right around that nickel mark.
I take in all the info I get from my detectors and process that info on every signal...but I never believe it 100% of the time.
The only sure way to know what you are scanning is to dig it and hold it in your hot little hand.

One more bit of info.

Those 3 class rings all came in zinc...and all of them were 3 or less in depth.
At least one of them was 1 1/2 to 2 deep...no more than that.
One clue about these targets is they all came in as a lower zinc signal.
My F2 has a range of zinc that goes from the mid 40's to the low 60's.
Zinc pennies are usually in the 59-62 range.
These rings were all 48-52.
That includes that third one from the left which I returned to the owner, was huge, weighed in at about 17 grams and if it was a 1/2 size bigger a quarter would have passed through it.
Dig those lower zinc numbers every time no matter what depth and a large gold ring could be your reward one day.
 
Currently I swing a Minelab E-Trac. It does a fantastic job distinguishing nickels from trash. I always dig the target if I think It's a nickel. :)

I go mostly by sound and size, nickels usually hit harder than trash. But you're right, you can get ones that come in low or strange. I think I have the hang of it, generally speaking. Normally when I tell myself It's not a nickel, but I'll dig anyway it almost always Isn't one. But I guess I should dig even more because of the possibility of gold. I just don't have the patience in trashy public parks to dig all the low tones. Places where every sketchy low tone ends up misc. sizes of can slaw drive me nuts. :white:usaflag::

Thanks a bunch for the info on the class rings! I like to dig the low zinc signals, especially in areas where the zincs are normally not chewed up and ringing in lower, because if it reads just lower than a zinc It's usually junk or something unusual (giving it a good shot at being some type of jewelry) You have given me great incentive to dig low end zinc signals even more than I do now. Hopefully some day I can share with you the story of me digging a whopper off a similar signal. :grin:
 
:perfect10: :clapping:!! Beautiful ring! I'm glad to be back on the forum. Just in time to see your greatest find. Thats an awesome array of gold you have there. Digging trash is an all day affair. But it has paid off for you. :congrats:
 
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