How it works
Sign in
Guide · Festivals

Lost something at a festival? The field is easier to search than the crowd.

A ring, a phone or a set of keys lost among thirty thousand people feels gone for good. It usually isn't. It is in the mud where your tent stood or where you sat down, and once the crowd leaves, that field is quiet ground that a detectorist can walk in an afternoon. Here is what to do while you are still on site, why festivals are their own case, and what to post so someone nearby can offer to look.

While you are still there

Before you leave the site

  1. 1

    Lost property first, and again before you leave

    Most phones, wallets and keys that get picked up at a festival end up at the lost-property tent within hours. Go there first, describe it, and go again on the last morning. Ask where things go once the site closes; many organisers keep a box for weeks.

  2. 2

    Mark your tent pitch

    Drop a pin on your phone while you are standing at your tent, and take a photo that shows something fixed: a tower, a fence line, a toilet block. When the campsite comes down, every pitch looks like every other pitch.

  3. 3

    Work out the last place you had it

    Ask your group. Someone remembers you paying at the bar, sitting down at the second stage, or falling asleep on the grass. Each of those is a small area; "somewhere on site" is not.

  4. 4

    Don't dig in the mud

    A ring or a phone in trampled mud has been pushed down a few centimetres. Digging pushes it further and destroys the spot. A detector reads through mud; hands don't.

Why this is different

What a festival does to the ground

The ground moves under thousands of feet
Grass becomes mud, mud gets churned, and small things sink. That sounds bad and is mostly good: a detector hears a ring under a few centimetres of mud as well as it hears one on a lawn, and the mud keeps it where it fell.
The site disappears within days
Tents come down, stages go, and the field is cleared and often mown. That is the window. Anything still in the ground after the crowd leaves is easiest to find in the few days when the field is empty and quiet.
The field belongs to someone
A festival site is farmland or a park, and after the event it is private ground again. Retrievly flags a request as private land so a searcher knows before they offer; getting permission from the landowner or organiser is their responsibility.
When you post

What a searcher needs from you

Two pins, not one
Your tent pitch, and the last place you know you had it. If they are the same, say so. A searcher walks the ground between them.
The dates
When the site opened, when it closed, and when it is cleared, if you know. A field that is still full of tents can't be searched; one that was cleared yesterday can.
What it is made of
A phone, a set of keys and a metal-framed pair of glasses all read on a detector. A plastic wristband or a fabric bag does not. Say what the thing is and a searcher knows whether a coil or a pair of eyes is the tool.
The photo of your pitch
The one with the tower or the fence in it. It is worth more than any description, because it lets a stranger stand where you stood.
Worth saying out loud

What we can't promise

A festival field is big and the window is short. A good searcher with two pins and a photo covers the ground that matters, and a lot of things do come back. Some searches still end without a find, nobody on Retrievly is vetted, and Retrievly is free for now: what passes between you and a searcher is yours to agree. How it works.

Post where you lost itSee requests near me

Browsing needs no account. You sign in only to post.

Who writes this

Kenny built Retrievly. He has snorkelled the Danube for years and keeps bringing up things that belong to other people: wallets with the ID still in them, phones, keys. That is where Retrievly came from.

Lost something at a festival? What to do before you leave | Retrievly