Find Recovery Services

Intro: 

Hey Everybody. Welcome! To Episode 60 of the metal detecting show podcast. My Name is Ciaran and I have been Metal Detecting for nearly 30 Years. This week by listen request I want to discuss Ring Recovery or Jewellery recovery services and how it generally works and what pit falls to look out for. So Lets get on with the show.

Music

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Content:

Hey Every one I hope your week has been great and that you got down to some happy hunting. My updates include nothing major in the personnel detecting front same as last week nothing major but just glad to be lungeing about out in the spring sunshine. I have been in Communication with C-Scope on the terrible situation they have found them selves in. if your not familiar they did a preliminary release of the C-Scope Evo 6000 to a few high profile and technical users and the initial reviews were not good as performance seems to be below expectations now most Manufacturers would drive on release and fix the performance issue via a software update later and we have all seen this happen from several Manufactures But C-Scope took the brave decision to issue a recall of all released machines and are in the process of trouble shooting the issue with a plan to release at a later date. I have to say this brave move directly correlates to C-Scopes Attitude to Quality  and they should be commended and lauded for this and I for one am still super Excited for the release of the EVO 6000 and I hope the issue turns out to be something small and an easy fix but onwards and upwards C-Scope I believe in you….. You can do it….

So this weeks topic of Choice has come directly from my call out a few weeks ago from topics to discuss and once I saw it I was like of course why didn’t I think of that myself. It also corresponded to around the time of Dirt Fish’s Mish video where she found an old junker Ring in a local park that happened to have been dropped by her sister a good few years earlier make sure to check out the video but it highlights that the more sentimental a target is the more people are willing to engage in your services in the hope of finding it no matter how crap it is. [I carried this watch up my ass for 3 straight years]

But Why do we do it well I believe there are several reasons 1. In the hope of getting Paid. 2. Just to do some good for your fellow man. 3 Its all about the thrill of the hunt for you. You don’t care what your hunting for as long as there are targets under the coil then you are a happy detectorist. 4. In the hope of getting a bigger permission. And finally 5 content particularly Youtube content. I actually think it’s a little bit of all of them except the content piece maybe. Sometimes you just want to help someone out and if this leads to something bigger then that’s a bonus but some people do do it as a side business to help offset some costs of the hobby and we will get into that in a bit but first I want to outline some important things to consider when engaging in a loss recovery. 

So what do you do when you either solicit the requests or your asked as a favour to hunt for some lost targets well the first thing I consider is how accurate is the victims recollection of where they lost it and even more importantly how much time has passed since the target was lost. the Accuracy of the drop zone is super time sensitive as the passage of time will affect the victims recollection and size of the drop zone 

considering the drop zone or where does the victim believe they dropped the target. Where the dropzone is or what type of terrain can have a drastic effect on the odds of whether it will be found or not for example. 

If your hunting in a back garden the likelihood is strong that you will recover the find as this is a contained environment with very little changing over time most back gardens have a defined border so when someone says they dropped it in the back garden then there is a strong likely hood it is in the back garden and you do not need to consider how accurate the victims recollection is of where they dropped the target. 

However consideration needs to be given to your recovery technique you don’t want to leave the garden in worse condition than a hormonal teenagers face with more craters than the surface of the moon. They wont thank you for recovering the target when the garden is like swiss cheese. So be surgical in the recovery it all helps with the experience.

However change the drop zone to a beach and it’s a different ball game altogether you need to consider tides, shifting sands due to wind but most importantly where does the victim believe they dropped the target. 9 times out of 10 this will not be accurate or at least as accurate as you want and will get less accurate with the passing of time since it dropped. I believe the best you can do on a beach is identify where they sat, picnic’d or swam on the beach and work back to where they parked or entered the beach taking the path most travelled. Still highly unlikely of a recovery but somewhat better than a river. 

If the drop zone happens to be in a river you have all the same issue to contend with but with the added complication of the river current which can push the target out of the drop zone very quickly. The only hope is that the actual river bed is made up of large rocks where the target can snag as opposed to fine gravel which can result in the find rolling down the river bed powered by the current. The best course of action is to enter the river where the victim did a work your way up the river to where they got out and hope they weren’t tubing for miles as this would be a waste of your time unless they wanted to pay you an hourly rate or the target was worth 10’s of 1000’s of dollars or of huge significate sentimental value which is entirely possible.

Some people have taken this to another level setting themselves up as a recovery business charging a call out charge whether the find is found or not. Irrespective of if you want to charge or you motivations are more altruistic there are several ways to do this effectively but it is essentially an advertising exercise for example if you only want to focus on local coverage its best to purchase adds in local classifieds put up flyers in local shops or print business cards leaving them in coffees shops etc this is the old school way of doing things but my suggestion would be to set up a simple website with a TLD positioned for local coverage for example Ringfindersmiami.com you can also register this business on google maps for example allowing people to find you when they specify there location when needed.

If you wanna go big time and focus on national coverage you can of course do all the same steps for local coverage but most countries will have a national register for you to register these with allow potential victims to have somewhere to search for help when they need it from someone who is close by.

But of course Recovery is not always about emergency call outs there is the everyday fact that at times we will find some piece of jewellery many of which have some identifiable information on them such as a class ring number not too popular in Europe but widespread across the states and can be returned to the owner by looking up class ring databases or manufacture information to help source the owner. Other information that can be inscribed including names and dates of weddings or engagements which can be looked up and correlated in the national marriage data base of whatever country you find yourself in.  However using the inscription almost like a secret password you can post a pic on social media giving the location of where you found it but keep the inscription to yourself requesting the potential claimants to repeat the inscription to you before you part company with the find.

It is general rule of thumb that you should make an effort to return an easily identifiable item to its owner however most countries transfer the ownership of the item after 365 days of no claim to the finder. 

Just a word of warning here time is also of an essence here and im talking from experience here and a mistake I made my myself. I found a wedding band with initials and a date inscribed inside and I was delighted its always nice to pick up a ring.

now this was in the early days of Social media so sticking up a pic was not an option the only option at the time was to stick a card in a local shop beside where I found the ring however I decided that I would do this the next time I was at this particular spot however this spot was a few hours away drive and I never got back to put up the card in the shop window and to be honest I cant even remember which of two beach’s I hunted that day did I find it on. I still have the ring and when im rolling around in all my jewels like smaug in the hobbit I do get a pang of guilt when I see it. Maybe its not to late to find the owner.

Before we Wrap up some advise if you do happen to be on the other side of the coin and do lose something remember time is off the essence. Fix your location clearly in your head write it down if you can because the minute you walk away you will never find that exact spot again making it harder to recover that special junk ring….

Wrap Up 

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Once again, I hope you have enjoyed this episode and we will chat to you all again next week. 

Get out there eyes down and Happy Hunting.