Saturday, November 24, 2012

$300,000 in Gold Dust Found

Gold dust found in heating duct
Workers for a heating and air conditioning company recently found over $300,000 in gold dust in a heating vent. The gold dust, hidden in a Sacramento, California home, was in a dozen baby food jars. To the workers' credit, they turned the find over to the homeowners. According to the company, Clark & Rush, they also found $25,000 in gold coins in a house in the 1980's. It just goes to show that treasure is still out there, and comes in many forms. You just have to keep looking.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

A Treasure Hunter's Dream Moments

Ahhh!  Treasure hunting with a metal detector is always fun, but it's not all excitement.  There are long stretches where patience is required as you listen to the soft chirps and beeps coming through the headphones, interpreting what they mean. And then a soft smooth tone sounds, indicating a possible treasure.  Most silver rings are in the penny-dime range, and gold rings sound the same or similar to a nickel or pulltab. So you still never know, until you flip out the target, and see something like the above.  Oooh, could it be? A big diamond ring?

Forgive the picture quality, these were taken with my older model phone. But let's get a look at that treasure in the rough!  Yes it's definitely a ring, not a pulltab or piece of mangled soda can. This recovery is happening during a hunt today on a sports field, where there is always the possibility of finding a nice piece of jewelry. This one certainly looks promising, and I want to get silver ring #10 or gold ring #1 before the year's hunting comes to an end.



Time to get this cleaned out and look for a mark inside the band. It felt nice and heavy, certainly looked like precious metal with sparkly diamonds, but alas, it was not to be. Although it's a nice ring, there are no marks, the stones are glued in, and there's a bit of corrosion starting to eat away at a spot on the underside.     

But hey, it's a nice treasure and it delivered one of those dream moments of anticipation. Ah well, that's what treasure hunting is all about, you never know what will be revealed. Keep at it and eventually the good stuff will come up. Today's the day!