<p><strong>I’ll set the date first April 1, 2012 or April fool’s day for the first time in years I didn’t get woken by my son to “Dad there’s a moose in the back yard” or to plastic wrap on the toilet.</strong> He and my wife went away for the weekend. Having a Sunday to myself does not happen often so I decided to take a road trip to the coast to a field I had gotten permission to detect. <p>The field is on a small harbor and has a foundation on it and the remains of an old dock on the small waterfront. I had been told by the owner that the rumor was that an old retired sea captain lived in the house that is now a foundation. The field also has been used as a ball field and has been used to hold parties and weddings in the past. </p> [split] <p>When I arrived I set the Safari up to my favorite settings. After detecting for about an hour and find some clad coins the Safari sang out a nice tone and showed a symbol of a ring and target Id of 10. I slowly cut out the plug and saw a glimmer of gold. I reached down and carefully pulled out a big gold ring. The ring had a huge stone and was very dirty. It was heavy and what did shine was bright I knew it was real. </p> <p>My heart was just pounding. I went back to my car and got out my cleaning kit and started cleaning the ring. After cleaning the ring for a while I noticed that the gold in areas of the ring seemed tarnished, and then I noticed a name in the ring Lia Sophia. My heart sank I had been April Fooled by the detector gods Lia Sophia makes costume jewelry and the ring was fake. </p> <p>Feeling discouraged I almost packed it up but decided to stay another hour. After finding a lot of junk I decided to try behind the remains of the dock a small trail was there. I was detecting along one side of the bank when I got a high pitched tone, the target ID was 8 and the screen showed a coin. I almost didn’t dig but decided to. </p> <p>About six inches down I saw what I thought was a small dime. I reached down and pulled it out and it was really dirty so I tried to clean it in the field. I saw some writing and it looked Spanish so I thought at first I had found a peso of some sort. I again headed up to the car and got out my cleaning kit, I started to clean thing I had got fooled again, then I saw something that made my heart skip a beat the date of 1808. I had found a 1808 Mexican ½ reale my oldest coin to date and my first reale!! Cannot wait to get out with my Safari and find more FIRST with it!!</p>