Found my first ring !

[Florida Keys Pirate]

Well , I finally found my first ring ! Problem is I can't tell if it is junk or silver. Inside the band says Thailand NF 925 . At least it looks like a 9 before the 25....hard to see. 925 means silver right ? Is there a 625 or 825 ? Help !

 

[Florida Keys Pirate]

Figures it out.with some help. Silver plated Nickle. Beats a pull tab !

 

[Gulf Hunter]

That should be .925, which is 92.5% silver & the rest being other metals for hardness. Where did you get silver plated nickel? Someone mislead you. You will be needing at least a 10 power loupe to read your markings. You will ALSO at least need to get an acid test kit(including a few bottles of silver test acid), to test your stuff, so you don't get screwed, or throw something in the junker box that is real, savvy?

 

[Critterhunter]

Yea, far as I know .925 is silver and they wouldn't say that on something silver plated.

 

[jumper]

"Sometimes" the ring size; in this case a "9" will appear before the 925

 

[BeachBat]

Sawasdee Kap (Hello)

The NF stand for Nickel Filled - which is common in Thailand. It's actually more sensible in that part of the world to make plated or nickel filled silver jewelery because in general there is no appreciation of silver whatsoever - so decorative is the way to go when they produce silver jewelery.

But don't be disheartened - firstly a ring is a ring...... always nice to find whatever they are made of, gives you encouragement to find some more. And secondly I would rather find a nice looking plated, nickel filled or rolled ring than a plain silver ring - quite simply a plain solid silver rings scrap value is minimal yet a nicely made plated ring can be worth more (a few $$) on the 2nd hand market. Don't forget that its the detectorists who place great emphasis on rings being solid silver, gold and platinum and dismiss anything else as junk - but detectorists don't buy, its the general public who buy and they are not so picky as long it looks nice. Even Titanium, Tungsten rings are dismissed frequently as a nothing - believe me I would happily never find another silver ring if I could find a bunch those - they are more fashionable and sell better..

My GT has a serious addiction to rings almost to the point where it actually seems incapable of not finding one......... just need to educate it to get the gold ratio a little better!!!

Happy hunting........... go find that gold one..........

 

[GunnarMN]

i have found rings like that and i felt let down, but eventually i did find some nice silver rings but to this date i have never found a gold ring and i have punded the sites hard

 

[Rick(ND)]

Once you get to know the Sovereign and get some experience with it your chance will be good in finding gold rings if they are there. I know I haven't found a whole lot, but better than I have since 1973 when I started detecting as there were no disc detectors then so we listened close to the signals more and dug more so gold was a bit more common to find. Now that a good Friend of mine I got started back in 1998 detecting with a Sovereign also once he got to know his Sovereign he has found some very nice gold ring too, most will read as trash, but have a smoother tone than that of trash.
Stick with it and learn as much you can in actual hunts and i feel your chance for gold can be very good. To start with you may dig a lot of trash, but the more you learn the less trash and the more better targets you will find.You will know after a while what is good and what isn't and those that just don't sound right you will want to dig just to see what they are, maybe a gold ring, maybe a nice token, could be a very old artifact or maybe just another piece of trash, but you will soon learn after digging some of them.

Good luck

Rick