If you have lost or found a Class Ring and don't know how to return it, click the Class Rings link to the left. There you can get information, by state, on class rings that have been lost or found.

You can also send me an email at the webmaster address on the bottom of this page. If you are local to me then there is the possibility the I can help you locate your lost item.

You can also do your own research by checking with the local library and high school. Most libraries in smaller communities that only have one high school or are in regional school districts get free copies of the year books each year. These may be kept in a special room and you may have to ask the local librarian for help.

If you know the year of graduation it should be a simple matter of finding the person in the year book and then hopefully the phone book. If that person isn't listed in the phone book then take a trip to the high school and see if they can give you a more current address, phone number or even an e-mail. If they ask you for the ring and say they will return it then I would say "No Thank You, I'd rather return it myself". If you give them the ring then there is no guarantee that you or the owner will ever see it again.

If you have found a class ring and intend on returning it, be sure to take a picture of it so you will have that as part of your collection. It's also not a bad idea to take some one with you so they can take a picture of you returning the ring to it's owner.

Gold rings and other pieces of jewelry that you find may not always have the Karat Number stamped on them. For example 10K, 18K or 24K may not be on the piece you found.  Instead it may be in decimal format. The chart below will let you convert the decimal and identify what the karat equivalent is. This chart was picked up on the internet and my thanks go to Steve in So. AZ for this information.

Silver S.G. pure 10-5, standard 10-31; a lustrous black metal, malleable and ductile used in jewelry and for ornamental and utility articles. Standard silver has 925 parts of pure silver with 75 parts of alloy to the 1,000.

Platinum S.G. 21-5; a hard and ductile grayish-black metal used for mounting gemstones, particularly diamonds. The metal has a high melting point (1755 C.) hence is employed where heat resistance is required.

A “950 Platinum” mark indicates that jewelry is 95 percent pure platinum, or 950 parts pure platinum out of 1,000. Identify this type of jewelry by any of these other marks: “Plat 950,” “Pt950,” “PLAT,” “PT,” “950 Plat” or “950Pt.”

Jewelry marked “900 Platinum” is 90 percent pure platinum, or 900 parts pure platinum out of 1,000. Look for any of these other marks to indicate this type of jewelry: “900 Plat,” “Plat 900,” “Pt900” and “900Pt.”

I have used a variety of metal detectors on dry land and on the wet sand at the beach as well as in the water. There are basically two types of metal detectors, VLF (very low frequency) and PI (pulse induction). A VLF machine will allow you to discriminate out the junk metal that you don't want, such as bobbie pins, nails and small pieces of iron and a variety other junk. PI machines work better in salt or mineralized sand conditions and tend to go deeper than the VLF detectors. The only draw back to them is that you can't discriminate out any junk. Whatever you find you have to dig to see if it's any good.

Both these detectors work well in fresh and salt water here in the northeast U.S. All the land detectors can also be used in the dry sand at the beach but can only get wet to about 12-24" deep, which means the coils are water proof and part of the shaft, but not the control housing. If salt water gets into the control housing it will do quite a bit of damage to the electronics of that unit.

The three buttons below are pretty much self explanatory. Click each one to see more pictures about that subject and I hope you enjoy what you see.