The New Murrey and Blue blog

This illustration is from the Yorkshire Post and has been chosen to illustrate the sort of wonderful finds that have been made by detectorists.

There has been a positive rash of such discoveries, and each time I am reminded again of how dreadful it must have been, way back when, to lose something as valuable as, say, a ring. People had fewer possessions then, and a jewelled ring would have been a dreadful loss.

There are other examples of lost jewellery, such as this article

plus, of course, the matchless Middleham Jewel!

Of course, not all detectorists are well-intentioned. Those they call nighthawks are in it for more nefarious reasons.

I cannot claim to have lost anything as valuable as the Middleham Jewel, but I did lose the emerald from my engagement ring. That awful moment when I glanced at my hand and saw the hole/space/gap, will live with me forever. It was like hearing the hollow clang of a huge invisible bell. My beautiful emerald had gone forever, and I was gutted.

Finding another emerald of the same colour and clarity proved impossible, so the ring now boasts a lovely ruby instead, but I still wonder what happened to the emerald.

Might someone find it in years to come? Or has it gone forever? I’d been into Gloucester that day, so it could had been lost then. A girl going shopping goes everywhere! One thing’s certain, unless they invent an emerald-detector, it won’t be located by some hopeful detectorist in a future century.