Karma Guy
Jr. Member
I'm new to the forum and haven't had anything recent to post but under the "best finds" category I can't beat this story, at least not yet.
My family and I traveled to Maui for a little R&R in February and as I can't sit in the louge chair for 6 straight days I brought along my detector so I could help pay for the trip. My inlaws came along as built in baby sitters for the 2 little pool sharks that I can claim as mine.
The first day I went south along the beach and spent 2 hours finding absolutely nothing, no bottle caps, fishing weights, pop tops etc. The beach was incredibly clean; I even thought my detector had bit the dust on the 5 hour flight over it was so bad. I finally gave up and decided to let my kids try and drown me in the pool and for the next few days didn't venture on to the beach. I finally had enough laying around so I decided to head north up the beach. After a short distance I picked up a few coins and some bottle caps so I was encouraged that my efforts were going to start paying off. After a short distance I started to weave in and out of lounge chairs that were placed on the beach and thinking this would be a good area to hunt. Little did I know that I was about to stumble on a find that still makes my heart skip a beat just thinking about it. In between 2 chairs my detector screamed real hard and sharp over a pretty big area of about 20" in diameter. I started to dig with my scoop and soon started to think that I was about to uncover some old anchor chain, half-rack of empties, drain pipe from the hotel. I kept digging as I had nothing else better to do; soon I was down about 18" and started to get on my knees to dig deeper. I gave my scoop one more swing in the pit and it hit something hard and metallic sounding. I looked in the hole and notice a white colored "V" shaped object that looked like trash....oh great some trash from a beach luau and I find it...neat! I reach down and pull it out and it's not trash but one of those jewelry store display placards that holds the earings and pendants at an angle in the display cabinet. The reason I new this is that there was still necklaces attached to it. My heart started pumping and I started to sweat even more and I thought Wooo Hoooo, I finally hit the motherload. It was about then that I realized that there were little white tags attached to every piece of jewelry and as I looked in the hole there was all kinds of loose necklaces, pendants, earings, bracelts etc. I started to pull handfulls of jewelry out of this hole and every single piece had a tag on it. My heart sank but I thought maybe there'll be a reward. By this time I realize there's people walking by but nobody stopped by to see what I was doing as clearly this ended up being a big hole. I'm sure everyone was thinking..."Another idiot pulling up bottle caps". I then started to get a little nervous as clearly this was all "hot" jewelry and not knowing if someone was watching me or who knows what. There was so much jewelry that I didn't have anything to put it in. My swimming trunks had a small pocket and my scoop couldn't hold that much, so there I was stuffing my shorts with stolen jewelry filled with sand, I crammed my scoop with the rest and carefully walked the 100 yards back to the hotel. Needless to say people were looking at me rather strangely. I made it back to the hotel room and dumped all the loot and cleaned the sand from my shorts (kind of uncomfortable) and went to go tell my wife (and mother in law) that they can stop giving me crap about finding bottle caps on the beach. We went back to the room and looked the stuff over and she asked me if I covered the whole area. Well of course not....my shorts were rather full as it was. I decided to head on back to my spot and this time I took a plastic grocery bag with me as I wasn't sure what else I would find. Needless to say about 3 feet to either side of my first find my detector screamed just like the first find. I dug down about the same distance and found an equal size cache of jewlery just like the first hole. With my plastic bag in hand I quickly emptied both holes and double checked for any loose jewelry that I might've missed. I continued on down the beach and didn't hit anythign else so I figured I found it all.
I went back to the hotel room and put all the loot together and was about to start cleaning it when my wife said don't clean any of it as you might have to prove to the cops that you found it....good point. I decided that I was going to take pictures as no one would believe this story without pics to back it up. The cops did come out within 15 minutes and did indicate that a store was hit about 2 weeks prior and that hopefully there would be some reward. I was glad to get rid of it as I didn't want anything to do with stolen jewelry...bad karma, not good.
About 3 weeks after coming home I received a nice pendant from the jewelry store (clashes with my eyes, had to give it to my wife) and a $1,000 check from the insurance company. They indicated that I had recovered 90% what was stolen and that the retail value was about $20k. I was also able to teach my kids a valuable lesson about "finders, keepers". They didn't quite understand why I had to give up my pirate treasure to the police but we're working on that.
I naturally haven't been able to beat this find but I keep trying.
Thanks for looking
My family and I traveled to Maui for a little R&R in February and as I can't sit in the louge chair for 6 straight days I brought along my detector so I could help pay for the trip. My inlaws came along as built in baby sitters for the 2 little pool sharks that I can claim as mine.
The first day I went south along the beach and spent 2 hours finding absolutely nothing, no bottle caps, fishing weights, pop tops etc. The beach was incredibly clean; I even thought my detector had bit the dust on the 5 hour flight over it was so bad. I finally gave up and decided to let my kids try and drown me in the pool and for the next few days didn't venture on to the beach. I finally had enough laying around so I decided to head north up the beach. After a short distance I picked up a few coins and some bottle caps so I was encouraged that my efforts were going to start paying off. After a short distance I started to weave in and out of lounge chairs that were placed on the beach and thinking this would be a good area to hunt. Little did I know that I was about to stumble on a find that still makes my heart skip a beat just thinking about it. In between 2 chairs my detector screamed real hard and sharp over a pretty big area of about 20" in diameter. I started to dig with my scoop and soon started to think that I was about to uncover some old anchor chain, half-rack of empties, drain pipe from the hotel. I kept digging as I had nothing else better to do; soon I was down about 18" and started to get on my knees to dig deeper. I gave my scoop one more swing in the pit and it hit something hard and metallic sounding. I looked in the hole and notice a white colored "V" shaped object that looked like trash....oh great some trash from a beach luau and I find it...neat! I reach down and pull it out and it's not trash but one of those jewelry store display placards that holds the earings and pendants at an angle in the display cabinet. The reason I new this is that there was still necklaces attached to it. My heart started pumping and I started to sweat even more and I thought Wooo Hoooo, I finally hit the motherload. It was about then that I realized that there were little white tags attached to every piece of jewelry and as I looked in the hole there was all kinds of loose necklaces, pendants, earings, bracelts etc. I started to pull handfulls of jewelry out of this hole and every single piece had a tag on it. My heart sank but I thought maybe there'll be a reward. By this time I realize there's people walking by but nobody stopped by to see what I was doing as clearly this ended up being a big hole. I'm sure everyone was thinking..."Another idiot pulling up bottle caps". I then started to get a little nervous as clearly this was all "hot" jewelry and not knowing if someone was watching me or who knows what. There was so much jewelry that I didn't have anything to put it in. My swimming trunks had a small pocket and my scoop couldn't hold that much, so there I was stuffing my shorts with stolen jewelry filled with sand, I crammed my scoop with the rest and carefully walked the 100 yards back to the hotel. Needless to say people were looking at me rather strangely. I made it back to the hotel room and dumped all the loot and cleaned the sand from my shorts (kind of uncomfortable) and went to go tell my wife (and mother in law) that they can stop giving me crap about finding bottle caps on the beach. We went back to the room and looked the stuff over and she asked me if I covered the whole area. Well of course not....my shorts were rather full as it was. I decided to head on back to my spot and this time I took a plastic grocery bag with me as I wasn't sure what else I would find. Needless to say about 3 feet to either side of my first find my detector screamed just like the first find. I dug down about the same distance and found an equal size cache of jewlery just like the first hole. With my plastic bag in hand I quickly emptied both holes and double checked for any loose jewelry that I might've missed. I continued on down the beach and didn't hit anythign else so I figured I found it all.
I went back to the hotel room and put all the loot together and was about to start cleaning it when my wife said don't clean any of it as you might have to prove to the cops that you found it....good point. I decided that I was going to take pictures as no one would believe this story without pics to back it up. The cops did come out within 15 minutes and did indicate that a store was hit about 2 weeks prior and that hopefully there would be some reward. I was glad to get rid of it as I didn't want anything to do with stolen jewelry...bad karma, not good.
About 3 weeks after coming home I received a nice pendant from the jewelry store (clashes with my eyes, had to give it to my wife) and a $1,000 check from the insurance company. They indicated that I had recovered 90% what was stolen and that the retail value was about $20k. I was also able to teach my kids a valuable lesson about "finders, keepers". They didn't quite understand why I had to give up my pirate treasure to the police but we're working on that.
I naturally haven't been able to beat this find but I keep trying.
Thanks for looking
That's alot of loot!!! Congrats for turning it in.....Great for your Karma! 
