Wot Should You do with your beach finds?

The Soverign GT has seen a bit of use lately, hitting the local beaches with some success and I now have a collection of coins and assorted jewellery building up.
The coins ($70+) I can, and am, dealing with, the assorted jewellery (mainly stg silver) is, I'm told, by my daughter, is cheap junk however this morning I found an 18ct gold necklace and pendant which I'm sure is not junk and would be very special to someone.
Searches for a possible owner on the internet/gumtree (Lost/found) etc have come up zilch so ........
Do I hand it into the Police (Lost and Found) ? If I handed in everything I found I would be in there every second day.
What do you do? and
How do you tell a diamond from a zircon? or is this something only an experienced jeweller can do?
Any comments/advice would be appreciated

Correct legal method is to hand it over to the cops, they hold it for 3 months and if not claimed its yours,
how many blokes n gals do that is anyone's guess, but the law defines selling found jewellery
as "theft by finding".

The stones need to be put on a gem probe for proper identification, all jewelers have these
and they usually don't charge for the service

Thanks for your comment CP, you have confirmed more or less what I believed was the right thing to do. If I lost something of value I would like to think it would be handed in.

How about if found in the water ? Talking to a collegue today and he is under the belief that if found in the ocean (water) its treasure and the rule of "finders keepers" applies????.

re the coins. keep them. there is no way anyone can identify them. they are fair game.

as for the jewelery, the right thing to do is hand it in.. in QLD, if it's not claimed within 60 days, then it's yours. jewelery is hard to match to an owner though. about all the police can do is search for all lost occurrences in a given time frame. chances are they won't find an owner and it will end up being yours.

ontop of that. atleast you'll have paperwork from the police saying you now officially own it, so when you decide to sell it, you'll have clear title.

Woteva wrote:How about if found in the water ? Talking to a collegue today and he is under the belief that if found in the ocean (water) its treasure and the rule of "finders keepers" applies????.

How do you prove you found it in the water?
Be safe and sleep at night. Declare it to the authorities.

Robert