Funny you should mention the high school ring. A few weeks back, the grammar school yard I frequently hunt coughed up a high school ring from 1961. Doing a few Web searches, I was able to track down a few people who went to the high school on the ring + or - 2 years of 1961, and with the help of one of them, I was able to track down the owner, whose initials were on the inside of the band. The school no longer exists, and needless to say the owner, who now lives in Florida, was ecstatic to find out his ring was found. He lost it back in 1978, while shoveling snow (get this) in a town about 75 miles away from where I found it. There was a highly identifiable characteristic about this ring that only the owner would know about, and he mentioned it in an e-mail to me, so I know it's his. How it made it to my neck of the woods is the stuff of mystery that makes this hobby so fun.

It's a really cool 10K ring (and indeed the best gold ring I've found during a year when all it seems I'm desined to be the King of Clad) and as much as we'd like to keep 'em all, it's even better when we can reunite 'em with their owners. On the other hand, it's not like we can hock those school rings for big bucks anyway...

Scott