Treasure hunter: a man searches the beaches for lost jewelry and returns them to their owners

Michael Oliver uses different methods to search for lost items on the beaches of Sydney, Australia. He is successful 90% of the time and most of his searches take him less than 2 hours, reports Insider.

Photo: IStock

On his tenth birthday, Michael got a metal detector, and his new passion was born. He never imagined that two decades later this would be his full-time job.

Michael used to be a forklift driver. He had back injuries and was fed up with working for a company that didn't seem to care about the employees and their efforts. In his free time, he was looking for metal to cheer himself up.

As the volume of jewelry he found began to pile up, he realized that he could make his passion his profession.

Finding Lost Jewels

Michael has been doing this professionally for seven years. He named his business "Lost Jewel Finding" rather than a metal detecting service because jewelry is the number one reason clients turn to him. Michael has a lot of equipment - not only ground-based metal detectors, but also scuba gear and underwater detectors.

This is because the search is being conducted not only on the sand, but also in the sea. “I can get wet searching in shallow water or literally dive into the depths of the ocean—whatever it takes to find a client's lost treasure,” he says.

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Michael begins his search at the location where he believes the client last had the item. It also depends on the ebb and weather, as the man says.

Sometimes Michael finds lost jewelry in five minutes or less. In other cases, it may take two hours.

“It all depends on weather conditions, tides and when the owner noticed the item was missing. This gives me an approximate radius of where the item might be. Every Sydney lifeguard has my number,” says Michael.

The call costs $104 for a two-hour search. Michael, as he admits, has a success rate of about 90%.

“There are tons of lost rings: engagement rings, wedding rings, family heirlooms, 21st birthday rings, grandma’s ring—a lot. Everyone is very sentimental and sometimes it is a very expensive loss in monetary terms. One guy said his engagement ring was worth about $35,” Michael says. — He lost it while swimming in the ocean. He secretly called me, hoping that I would find him before his wife noticed. I did this within an hour. And recently I found a ring that my mother gave to her daughter before she died.”

Michael even has regular customers. One man called him twice to find his lost wedding ring.

“One widow lost her late husband's wedding ring while kayaking. They were married for 25 years, and since his death 19 years ago, she has never taken off her “always” wedding ring, Michael says.

Moments of discovery are often emotional

Sometimes curious beachgoers who have watched the painstaking search burst into spontaneous applause when Michael finds a lost item. Michael says that in other cases the owner simply cries with happiness. “I get a lot of hugs,” he says.

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Michael found a gold Rolex watch with diamonds that the owner said was worth $70.

“I remember how one woman lost a gift - an expensive bracelet with a very rare and precious stone. After I fought the waves, I heard these magical metal detector beeps,” Michael recalls. “The woman called it a miracle, and her partner was so happy that he grabbed me and hugged me so tightly that he immediately broke the bracelet - it broke in half.”

One day, Michael was called to help a man who wore his father's ashes around his neck in the form of a crucifix, but lost them after a fight at a house party.

During the height of summer, Michael receives up to six calls a day, mostly to various busy beaches.

Michael takes his mom with him on search missions.

“She loves the metal detector too. She will spend hours on her knees, determined to find the lost item. She works 18 hours a day at the hospital and then is at the beach at 4am. That’s how dedicated we are—and how busy we are,” he says.

Winter is a different story

Michael says that in the winter a whole month can go by without a call.

“I love metal detecting so much that in my free time I just do metal detecting as a hobby and take videos of interesting things that I find,” he says.

Michael finds thousands of pieces of unclaimed jewelry. He never sold any of it.

“I'm very proud of it. These are not my jewelry - these are someone’s things that are waiting for their owners,” he says.

Michael found a related side job posting videos of his discovery missions on his YouTube channel. Now he has 309 subscribers, and Michael earns from advertising.

“On a rainy day, I'll use the time to edit videos, which is time-consuming but helps pay the bills,” he says.

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Michael admits that the best part of his job is the adrenaline rush he gets when the owner of a lost piece of jewelry claims it's impossible to find.

“They think it's already washed into New Zealand, but it hasn't. I have hundreds of videos proving time and time again that their jewelry can be found, usually to their great surprise,” says Michael.

“I help others find lost treasures. That's what I get up in the morning for: these meetings. I live for them,” he says.

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