‘I gave up hope – then a metal detectorist messaged me’: eight readers on lost and found possessions

From a wedding ring washed away in the surf to tickets for Leonard Cohen's first London gig, these are the possessions that refused to give up on their owners

Many years ago, as a twentysomething in Dublin, I had to leave a flat I had been living in quickly, and inadvertently left behind a shelf full of books. When I went back a week later, the landlord had thrown them out. Twenty years on, I returned to Dublin with my daughter and found three of the books in a secondhand shop, with the date and my signature on them.
Karl Sweeney, financial analyst, Prague