DIGGER27
In Memory Of
I don't know about you guys but this is shaping up to be my best year ever...gold wise.
Been real busy this week and no time to hunt, but the wife was trying to do a little work at home tonight and she evidently had it with me flitting around acting antsy like I do when I don't dig in the dirt for a few days.
She says, "Why don't you go hunting for awhile?", and once again I immediately do my best impression of the Road Runner from the cartoons...
Meep Meep, a high speed bullet sound and nothing left standing there except an outline of me in a dissipating cloud of dust.
I head over to a big Jr college that is only about 2 miles from my house because I only have a few hours of light left.
I have been here many times, this is one of my go-to places when I don't feel like driving far but still feel like digging.
Lots of different areas to hunt here, but I park near a big basketball court that I have done to death and have found a bunch of clad around this thing but no jewelry.
Doesn't matter, I am just gong to dig any solid signals I missed in the past, and maybe a few iffy ones, too.
Didn't expect much, I was just here to dig and get it out of my system so just a few zincolns would have been ok.
I did find those zincolns, a few copper pennies, a dime and a couple of keys.
This one was actually pretty neat and I figured this would be my cool prize of the day on this short hunt.
Some guys came over to play some ball and I moved over to the other side of this big court, didn't find much so I walked out into a pretty large flat area right next to the court that is about the size of a football field.
I had no idea if anything was out here, not sure if it was really used for anything but what the heck.
It was kind of silly for me to even try to hunt this large area, I only brought the F2 and the sniper coil because it has been so lucky for me lately.
I usually just use one of my detectors till it feels the luck has run out and then switch to another.
Small coil, big area but hey, sometimes I am real lucky and lightning has struck before so lets give it a whirl.
Nope, no lightning this time so I cross over a little street and start hunting another of my favorite areas, a grass island dividing up a large parking lot.
There are a lot of them here and I have hit most of them before several times.
I dug a huge amount of clad out of these in the past using the 8" coil on the F2 and also my Compadre, dug lots of trash, too, but I never really found any good jewelry in these things.
That is actually strange because most of the time I usually find a few silver rings at least at sites like this, but except for some junk stuff like key chain fobs and college year pins nothing much else ever came out of here for me except clad.
A few times I have been here with the F2 and the sniper coil and hit a few of these again, this time I picked one the sniper hasn't tasted yet.
Still not expecting much of anything I just slowly wandered around looking for any solid signal, digging a few more coins and a little trash, but this place was pretty cleaned up by me in the past so not a ton of signals of any kind.
I wasn't gridding and I was moving pretty fast but I happened to hit a signal right next to a curb.
27-28 and a few jumps to 30.
This is not what I consider a solid signal but I stopped and turned and hit it from a different angle and managed to get a more solid 28-30 on my screen.
Solid enough for me so I bent down and pried up a little dirt about 2 inches deep.
I really was expecting a large piece of foil or some can slaw, but instead I see in the dirt the edge of a small ring and that small piece was really clean and a beautiful golden color.
Remember that great Who song "Won't get fooled again"?
Yea, don't play that for me because I sure was...but these are the kind of little surprises that make me so glad I am wrong.
I plucked it out of the ground, all the dirt brushed off like water falling off the back of a duck and I looked for a mark.
Hmmm...no mark.
Well there was a little mark of some kind but is worn and just a small piece of something larger and you can't tell anything from that.
Looking closer at this ring I think I know why there is no karat mark.
This baby looks like it might be old to me, really old like heirloom stuff.
I think either this thing was made before marks had to be stamped in jewelry by law, or it is old enough and has been worn for so long that any marks inside except for that one little piece has just been worn away.
I have yet to buy a gold testing kit but now I guess I have to, however I have dug enough gold to know what the real deal looks like and this is definitely it.
As a matter of fact, I suspect this is at least 14k, but it may just be higher than that like 18 or 22k.
The wife is the best tester I know of and she says this is gold so you can almost bet the farm on that.
A test kit is going to be ordered asap...this is going to drive me crazy till I know.
Now lets talk about the stone in this thing.
Not perfectly round, a translucent overlay, little marks that travel in circles and gritty when you rub it on your teeth.
I think this is an actual, natural pearl and so does the wife!
From what I can tell and have read about real pearls this appears to be the real deal, but if any gemologists out there have a different opinion just let me know.
Here is a macro shot of this thing.
That pearl is another reason I think this is old.
This might have been a more modern birthstone ring of some kind, but I think long ago pearls might have been pretty popular before diamonds became all the rage.
Gold and pearl rings are still sold all over the place today, but I just get the impression this is way older than me...maybe even older than my parents or grandparents.
A short nothing hunt that wasn't supposed to net me anything good turns out to be one where I found what might be one of the coolest rings in my collection.
Ok, my wife's collection.
The minute I saw this I knew this was just her style, it fits her perfectly and she is already staring at it like a starving dog looks at a pork chop.
I was lucky to get it off her hand to take these pictures.
Life is funny...sometimes the hunts you expect the most from are busts, and on others that you expect nothing nets you the really good stuff.
I think the F2, sniper coil and me need to spend a little more time in those islands in the near future.
Been real busy this week and no time to hunt, but the wife was trying to do a little work at home tonight and she evidently had it with me flitting around acting antsy like I do when I don't dig in the dirt for a few days.
She says, "Why don't you go hunting for awhile?", and once again I immediately do my best impression of the Road Runner from the cartoons...
Meep Meep, a high speed bullet sound and nothing left standing there except an outline of me in a dissipating cloud of dust.
I head over to a big Jr college that is only about 2 miles from my house because I only have a few hours of light left.
I have been here many times, this is one of my go-to places when I don't feel like driving far but still feel like digging.
Lots of different areas to hunt here, but I park near a big basketball court that I have done to death and have found a bunch of clad around this thing but no jewelry.
Doesn't matter, I am just gong to dig any solid signals I missed in the past, and maybe a few iffy ones, too.
Didn't expect much, I was just here to dig and get it out of my system so just a few zincolns would have been ok.
I did find those zincolns, a few copper pennies, a dime and a couple of keys.
This one was actually pretty neat and I figured this would be my cool prize of the day on this short hunt.
Some guys came over to play some ball and I moved over to the other side of this big court, didn't find much so I walked out into a pretty large flat area right next to the court that is about the size of a football field.
I had no idea if anything was out here, not sure if it was really used for anything but what the heck.
It was kind of silly for me to even try to hunt this large area, I only brought the F2 and the sniper coil because it has been so lucky for me lately.
I usually just use one of my detectors till it feels the luck has run out and then switch to another.
Small coil, big area but hey, sometimes I am real lucky and lightning has struck before so lets give it a whirl.
Nope, no lightning this time so I cross over a little street and start hunting another of my favorite areas, a grass island dividing up a large parking lot.
There are a lot of them here and I have hit most of them before several times.
I dug a huge amount of clad out of these in the past using the 8" coil on the F2 and also my Compadre, dug lots of trash, too, but I never really found any good jewelry in these things.
That is actually strange because most of the time I usually find a few silver rings at least at sites like this, but except for some junk stuff like key chain fobs and college year pins nothing much else ever came out of here for me except clad.
A few times I have been here with the F2 and the sniper coil and hit a few of these again, this time I picked one the sniper hasn't tasted yet.
Still not expecting much of anything I just slowly wandered around looking for any solid signal, digging a few more coins and a little trash, but this place was pretty cleaned up by me in the past so not a ton of signals of any kind.
I wasn't gridding and I was moving pretty fast but I happened to hit a signal right next to a curb.
27-28 and a few jumps to 30.
This is not what I consider a solid signal but I stopped and turned and hit it from a different angle and managed to get a more solid 28-30 on my screen.
Solid enough for me so I bent down and pried up a little dirt about 2 inches deep.
I really was expecting a large piece of foil or some can slaw, but instead I see in the dirt the edge of a small ring and that small piece was really clean and a beautiful golden color.
Remember that great Who song "Won't get fooled again"?
Yea, don't play that for me because I sure was...but these are the kind of little surprises that make me so glad I am wrong.
I plucked it out of the ground, all the dirt brushed off like water falling off the back of a duck and I looked for a mark.
Hmmm...no mark.
Well there was a little mark of some kind but is worn and just a small piece of something larger and you can't tell anything from that.
Looking closer at this ring I think I know why there is no karat mark.
This baby looks like it might be old to me, really old like heirloom stuff.
I think either this thing was made before marks had to be stamped in jewelry by law, or it is old enough and has been worn for so long that any marks inside except for that one little piece has just been worn away.
I have yet to buy a gold testing kit but now I guess I have to, however I have dug enough gold to know what the real deal looks like and this is definitely it.
As a matter of fact, I suspect this is at least 14k, but it may just be higher than that like 18 or 22k.
The wife is the best tester I know of and she says this is gold so you can almost bet the farm on that.
A test kit is going to be ordered asap...this is going to drive me crazy till I know.
Now lets talk about the stone in this thing.
Not perfectly round, a translucent overlay, little marks that travel in circles and gritty when you rub it on your teeth.
I think this is an actual, natural pearl and so does the wife!
From what I can tell and have read about real pearls this appears to be the real deal, but if any gemologists out there have a different opinion just let me know.
Here is a macro shot of this thing.
That pearl is another reason I think this is old.
This might have been a more modern birthstone ring of some kind, but I think long ago pearls might have been pretty popular before diamonds became all the rage.
Gold and pearl rings are still sold all over the place today, but I just get the impression this is way older than me...maybe even older than my parents or grandparents.
A short nothing hunt that wasn't supposed to net me anything good turns out to be one where I found what might be one of the coolest rings in my collection.
Ok, my wife's collection.
The minute I saw this I knew this was just her style, it fits her perfectly and she is already staring at it like a starving dog looks at a pork chop.
I was lucky to get it off her hand to take these pictures.
Life is funny...sometimes the hunts you expect the most from are busts, and on others that you expect nothing nets you the really good stuff.
I think the F2, sniper coil and me need to spend a little more time in those islands in the near future.
