Finally got around to editing some pictures from a couple of hunts last year. First one was detecting a friend's property in an 1800's hamlet just out of town. His residence used to be an old bakery and later a roadhouse, so I was expecting a fair bit of junk in the ground. Armed with the Deus and small HF coil, the first spot to detect was a large garden bed utilising excavated material from where the stagecoaches used to park (now a swimming pool).
Low and behold, the first decent target of the day was a double beep 55, and after having a quick look saw a ring shaped object on the surface. I was initially going to dismiss it as a child's aluminium play ring, though on closer inspection it looked really yellow and with hallmarks. Now I have only ever found a couple of gold rings in a dry land setting, and I was getting excited that this ring might be really old. After some research the ring was made by Joachim Matthias Wendt, a very well known colonial jeweller from Denmark who settled in Adelaide around 1851. He liked to use local gold and gems in all his jewellery, and in fact owned the Alma Gold Mine at Waukaringa which supplied most of SA''s gold after the 1850's.
The ring is small, only 1.6 grams though made of 22ct gold - most likely a woman's ring. After such a great start to the day, surely the rest of the day was going to be a bit of a let down. Quite frankly there was so much iron in the garden bed that it was near on impossible to get any penetration, though the next target was a boomer and also near surface - an 1854 Vic half penny.
As predicted the rest of the hunt in the backyard was a bit of a let down, with a few buckles down assorted period items - and a lot of rubbish. The owner of the property was in the process of renovating and had found several silver coins in the walls (including two florins from 1925 & 1947). Even after I offered the ring to the property owner, he let me keep the ring after if I paid him half of the gold value for it (I think it is worth more in historical context), though at 1.6 grams it wasn't worth much in the end.
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