As of: February 16, 2024, 11:00 a.m
By: Gerda Gebel
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Treasure hunter Alexander Benke (l.) was able to return the ring he was looking for to its owner in a roundabout way.
She and her daughter were very happy about it (M.).
The workers Woife (r., r.) and Robert found the ring.
© Private
How detectorist Alexander Benke helped find a lost wedding ring
Oberneuching - Anyone who lost a ring in a rest area on the motorway near Munich during the snow chaos weekend at the beginning of December can hardly hope to ever find it again.
The fact that there was a happy ending for the lady in question is thanks to several good spirits, but above all to Alexander Benke from Oberneuching.
Benke has been traveling around the district as a detectorist for years, using his metal detector to search for a wide variety of objects in meadows and fields.
He found a lot of scrap, but also old coins, musket balls and an American dog tag from World War II (we reported).
Sometimes the 39-year-old also takes on an order search if someone has lost a piece of jewelry in the garden or in the field.
You can use a professional order search website to do this.
The search is stopped there with information about the finder's fee if it is successful, but also an expense allowance if the search is unsuccessful.
Specialists can carry out an order search there, and if successful, they receive the agreed finder's fee.
Such an order search appeared on the search website in early December.
The search was for a wedding ring that a lady from Hesse had lost at the Fürholzen rest area on the A9 on the weekend of the big snow chaos at the beginning of December 2023.
The loss hit the woman, who did not want to be named, hard, as it was the wedding ring that she had received from her late husband Wolfgang.
To comfort the sad mom, her daughter decided to invest her Christmas money in searching with a professional - and posted the order online.
The task didn't seem difficult because the mother was able to pinpoint where she most likely lost the ring.
Benke received a sketch of the rest area with an exact description of the place where the mother brushed the snow off her coat and the ring probably fell from her cold fingers into the snow.
Despite an intensive search, the woman could not find the piece of jewelry in the deep snow and with a heavy heart got on the bus back to Hesse.
They therefore expected more success from a professional detectorist like Benke, who shortly afterwards went to Fürholzen with his metal detector.
But even the professional quickly realized that it wouldn't work.
“The concrete slabs at the rest area were probably reinforced with steel, which is why the detector beeped constantly and there was nothing that could be done,” explains Benke.
His special activity did not go unnoticed at the rest area, and so he got into conversation with two men who keep the area in order.
Benke told the two workers about the search, showed a picture of the ring they were looking for, and they exchanged phone numbers “in the unlikely event that the ring turns up after the snow melts.”
He had to report the failure to the client, and after receiving the failure fee, the case was almost closed for him.
“I still had a very small hope that maybe Woife and Robert would find the ring at the rest stop,” reports the amateur treasure hunter.
The client also hoped for a small miracle and saw the same name between the deceased father and the rest area employee - Wolfgang - as a small hint of fate.
And ten days later the woman from the rest area actually contacted Sondler Benke via WhatsApp.
“Robert found something there,” he wrote and sent along a photo of the find.
“That was awesome, it was actually the ring we were looking for,” says the Oberneuchinger, describing the moment of great joy.
An appointment was quickly made for handover at the rest stop, where Benke picked up the ring in order to immediately send it to the client.
It was probably a very emotional moment for the widow when she was actually able to hold her sorely missed wedding ring in her hands again shortly before Christmas.
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“She called me and thanked me from the bottom of her heart,” says Benke.
Although he missed out on the big finder's reward from the order because he didn't find the ring, the client thanked him and the helpers from the rest area with a financial gift.
In any case, Benke is happy about the happy outcome of the search: “It’s not about the money for me.
It's important to me that the owner gets his lost piece back." In order to let the entire special community share in the happy ending, the story can also be seen on Benke's YouTube channel ("TreasurErdinger").
Information about order search:
www.detectorist.eu
www.ringfinder.eu
www.wirfinddeinenring.de