Ohio man finds his late father's lost wedding ring, then a friend's

Sometime between 1977 and 1982, John Arnett lost his gold wedding ring while washing his new car in the front yard of the family home in Swanton, Ohio, near Toledo. Before he died in 2013, aged 78, he told his son Jeff that if he ever got a metal detector, he should go back to the old house and look for it. Jeff searched the property on and off for more than a decade, about two and a half years of searching in all. His old detector struggled to pick a ring out from all the scraps of metal left in the ground by years of roofing work. In the summer of 2026, his family gave him a much better machine. The house, owned for 36 years by Pastor Tim Coley, was about to be sold, so Jeff went back for one more try. Within minutes, in the front yard, he had a signal, and about two inches down was his father's ring. He said it was almost like touching his father one last time. His mother, Carol, who had been married to John for 55 years, knew what had happened the moment she saw his face. She got out their wedding album. The story spread, and it reached Kevin Young, a friend of Jeff's since grade school. About six years earlier, Mr Young had lost his own wedding ring while renovating his house in Swanton, when it slipped off inside his work gloves as he moved building rubble outside. On 30 August, Jeff went round with his detector and found that ring too, near the house's foundations. Reported by WTOL 11, Toledo (28 August and 17 September 2026). Written for Global Finds from those reports. Photo: Main Street, Swanton, Ohio, an early 20th-century postcard, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.