Finders keepers, grateful weeper
Treasure hunters are popping up all over Nelson with their metal detectors in hand and while it is a hobby for many, some are helping people find lost items.
Nelson retiree Clancy Hunt, 72, has been metal detecting for about five years and while she has many historical items to show for her beeps and digs, she was surprised to be able to help a distraught woman one evening late last year.
The woman had dropped a beautiful diamond ring with a lot of family history on a beach.
When Hunt got the call to action, she arrived to find the ring had been lost in the morning at low tide. The tide had since come in and was going out again.
‘‘I thought, this is going to be difficult,’’ Hunt said.
The ring’s owner had lost it while throwing a stick for her dog, so Hunt got her to throw another stick to see how far the jewellery might have gone.
Donning her waders, Hunt went into the water and her detector quickly got a hit. She was happy to be able to hand the ring back to its tearful owner.
A lover of history, Hunt said though she was a nurse for nearly 40 years, as she got older she realised she would have liked to have been an archaeologist. ‘‘It is going out there and finding things that tell me about people.’’
One of the ‘‘most important finds’’ to her, is a Tyneside Irish cap badge, which she said was given to soldiers during basic training before they were sent to the 1916 Battle of the Somme where one-third of the soldiers were wounded or killed. Found in Victory Square, she guessed someone who had fought in the battle moved to Nelson. During a visit to England, she found one of the oldest coins she owns, dated 1216 to 1272 during the reign of Henry II. ‘‘I have got so many finds,’’ she said, including pre-decimal coins, square nails, a 19th century cricket buckle, and a goat bell found at Tahuna beach.
She said one of the responsibilities of being a good detectorist was being mindful of not leaving patches of soil while digging.
‘‘Most of the time, you can’t see where we have been.’’
And when finding rubbish including old cans, bottle tops or pull tabs, ‘‘you take it and get rid of it properly’’, Hunt said.
Nelson man, Stewart Gill said his interest in metal detecting was piqued by British comedy series The Detectorists. In two years he had found a variety of items, including pennies, old shaving knives, a platinum ring and cap guns.
While helping a man find his keys, Gill uncovered a gold ring with an engraving. The man told Gill: ‘‘I knew the man that lost that’’. The signet ring had been in the ground for nearly 50 years and was returned to its owner who had been gifted it by a girlfriend at the time.
A community of about 40 metal detectorists met regularly for group hunts, Gill said, and there was a variety of people drawn to the art of detecting, including a boy in his early teens.