Mike Peschon Relishes the Thrill of the Search

Every time Mike Peschon pulls out his metal detector, he is like a little boy on a hunt. The thrill of finding someone’s treasure, whether on land or in the water, pulls him out the door several days a week.

Over the past 33 years, Peschon has collected nearly 4,400 rings, countless old coins, and other historic artifacts.

“I really enjoy being able to go out by myself and search for the unexpected,” Peschon shared. “It’s a time for me to put my headphones on and get away from the air compressor, skill saws, jack hammers, and phone calls. Hunting with the metal detector is solitude, a tranquil time for me.”

A co-owner of 3D Builders, Peschon started searching with his first metal detector 33 years ago. His wife’s uncle, Donald Heyer, gave him an old metal detector to try out, and the first coin he found was at the High Point at Wahepton.

“I dug down and found a 1924 silver quarter,” he said with excitement. “This was the first coin I ever found; it’s a Standing Liberty and really hard to find. In all the time I have been searching, I have only found eight and one was the first piece I ever found. It got me hooked.”

The Peschons also lived near a dance hall and Mike started to find all sorts of treasures. Then he found a pair of baseball shoes with $20 inside.

“I was always lucky enough to find stuff, which piqued my interest,” he said. “You also get a good, warm feeling being able to return something to someone that means so much to them,” he said.

On the job site, Peschon has found lots of artifacts and Indian arrowwoods.

“We do a lot of excavating, building trenches, and such and you often will find things in the ground,” he explained. “You get to a place where you’re going to dig, and you get excited about what you might find. Many homeowners don’t realize they’ve been mowing over a treasure for years.”

Peschon started searching for older ball fields, horse tracks, long forgotten carnivals around the region. He started to find a lot of older items from days long past.

“This really got me hooked, as you find things like old 1800s coins, and you think of who it could’ve once belonged too and now is gone,” he shared. “I really enjoy the history behind a find.”

One treasure he found he donated to the Brown County, MN Museum in New Ulm. He was in the community using his metal detector around the courthouse. History shows that the same band of Indians that came through Dickinson County went further north. As Peschon was digging, he came across a large bullet. He kept it and was later filling up with gas when a New Ulm police officer came by the station.

“I handed the bullet over to him and said this is what I found today, ‘would you like this?’” Peschon shared. “A few days later, I get a call from the museum. The police officer had dropped it off there, and the curator had the bullet carbon dated. The bullet was found to be the only known bullet existing from the 1861 New Ulm Uprising.”

The oldest coin Peschon has found is an 1816 penny. Another reading discovered a part of a leather coin purse six inches underground. The leather was deteriorated but inside there were five coins dating between 1870-1889.

Moving His Search to Water
After spending 16 years recovering different coins and treasures on land, Peschon decided to widen his search and purchased a water detector, a Minelab metal detector from Australia.

This tool can be submersible in water and makes a difficult task much easier. “It’s much tougher to find things in water but you learn different tricks in how to search,” Peschon said. “You also just find different things in the water, than on land.”

Mystery Class Ring Recovery
This was another very bizarre ring return that really had no explanation except it must have been meant to be. Mike calls this the “Mystery Class Ring finds rightful owners in a bizarre fashion story!”

Spin back 24 years and Mike is searching along the Discovery House on Hill Ave. with his metal detector. He is near the porch and on the west side of the house, he gets a soft but solid beep on the detector. He could tell it was deep, so he gently pries and digs down about five inches. Then appeared – a gold class ring!

Upon first inspection, Mike could tell it was a smaller woman’s ring. When he got home, he soaked it overnight, and the next day, he wiped it clean and found it in good shape.

“I have found and returned many class rings, but in order to do that you need three things – the year, the school and the initials,” he explained. “If one is missing, it’s more difficult.”

The ring Mike found had all three things – the year was 1936, the school was G.C. High School, and the initials on the band was M.M.T. Mike starts taking the clues and begins to search.

He first took G.C. and thought of different Iowa schools: Gilmore City, Gruver Central, Guthrie Center. He tucked the ring away in the safety deposit box with hundreds of other unclaimed rings, keeping the information at home on a piece of paper.

“I searched off and on for a couple years and did make contact with a school in Guthrie Center, who was able to provide some information,” Mike shared. “They said I don’t know if this helps but we do have a match to the ring, maybe Martha May Tawney and she may have married someone by Spirit Lake but don’t know who.”

In defeat, Mike tucked the ring away but never forgetting the story.

Spin forward 21 years and on a damp but nice early November day, Mike decides to travel to the West Bend Grotto. It rains all the way to West Bend, so he goes first to the visitor center across the street.

“There’s only one person in there at the desk and I strike up a conversation for a good hour with her,” he said.

She asks him what types of things he detects, which Mike replies, “I said you name it, I’ve found it – coins, tokens, harmonicas, belt buckles, the list is endless. Then I mention the class ring I found 20 years ago, and it still bugs me that I haven’t found the owner.”

Mike begins to tell the lady about the ring. She says, “Wow, that’s the same year my mother graduated!” He goes on to say he thinks the ring is from Guthrie Center High School.

The lady looks at him in a peculiar way and said, “My mother graduated from there. What was the initials?”

“Was your mother’s name Martha May Tawney?” Mike asks.

The lady turns white as a ghost!

“Here on a whim, I decide to go to West Bend and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger,” Mike said. “I race back to Spirit Lake to get her mother’s class ring!”

He retrieves the ring from the safety deposit box and drives back to West Bend to give it to the lady. While waiting, she had called her sister and told her about it. “She said her sister shared that at one time, all of her jewelry had gotten stolen in Spirit Lake where they had lived for a short time.

“She told me that when I handed her the ring that her mother had passed away four years previous, so it was a precious find,” Mike added.

Mike can tell you story after story about his finds!

Search for the Masonic Ring
This is just one story about a ring recovery, not your ordinary and can only be explained as “It was meant to be!”

The year was 1995 and Mike got a phone call, “Hello! Hi, is this Mike the treasure hunter? My name is Allen and I lost something very important to me. Can you come to my shop?”

Mike went to the shop and met Allen. He was a smaller guy, a little hunched over and dressed in work coveralls. He discovered he was a Mason and very proud of it. He proceeds to tell me, “Mike, you have to find this ring!!! My wife died four years earlier, so I took her diamond out of her ring and had it put dead center of my Masonic ring. This way she is still with me wherever I go.”

Allen isn’t sure where he lost it, but he had gone cat fishing on the east fork of the Des Moines River. The two hop into his truck and go to the spot where Allen had first parked. There is a half-mile walk to the river and it’s 2,000 acres of pasture.

“It could be somewhere out here,” Allen shared.

“I’m thinking, I have an eight-inch search coil and have to search 2,000 acres,” Mike said. “There’s no way I’m going to recover this but didn’t say this.”

Mike turns on his metal detector and starts walking to the river, searching right to left and helter-skelter until they get to where Allen had been fishing. They searched and searched for hours in the heat and mosquitoes. Hope was diminishing rapidly.

Then Allen suddenly said, “Wait, I went there and fell down on the bank.”

They searched in that spot but nothing. Allen was feeling very defeated, so Mike said, “Why don’t you go ahead, and I will come in a few minutes.”

Mike randomly walks through the huge pasture with no plan or reason to where he was going. He comes up to pasture bogs, which look like camel humps. He’s skipping along when all of a sudden… “BOOM!” He kneels down and parts the grass. The metal detector is screaming back at him.

“I’m thinking, there is absolutely no way!” he said.

He backs up and parts the grass again and staring straight at him was a large Masonic ring! “I was speechless and in awe,” he said.

Mike sticks it back in his pocket and quickly walks back to the truck. Allen is quiet and wouldn’t say a word, not realizing Mike had found it. When they got back to Spirit Lake, Allen got out of the truck. Mike opens the house door and blocks Allen from going in, “Before you go in, I want you to have this!”

Mike reaches into his pocket and pulls out the big Masonic gold ring with Allan’s wife’s diamond in it. Allen’s knees buckled and tears are flowing. He cried for five minutes of disbelief and joy.