Whether to prevaricate or from benign ignorance of the facts, LeGrand Richards denied the existence of the seerstone:

We don’t have a seer stone. That went back with the plates…


(from The Legrand Richards Interview)

WALTERS: Well I thought somebody said that Joseph Fielding had Joseph Smith’s seer stone.

RICHARDS: No. We don’t have that.

WALTERS: You don’t have that?

RICHARDS: No.

WALTERS: Oh.

RICHARDS:: We have got some of the early writings of the Prophet Joseph and things of that kind, and testimony of when Joseph Smith performed a plural marriage for them, but – things of that kind in the Historian’s office. But we have [unintelligible] church.

VLACHOS: Is the seer stone in the historical department?

RICHARDS:: We don’t have a seer stone. That went back with the plates when [unintelligible]

WALTERS: Oh! Okay, I hadn’t heard that. I see. I thought that somebody said that it was still out there somewhere.

VLACHOS: Do you know what it looked like?

RICHARDS: What?

VLACHOS: Do you know what the stone looked like?

RICHARDS: No. I’ve never seen it. And I don’t think there is any living man who has seen it.


From the 2015 Salt Lake Tribune article “Mormon church releases photos of ‘seer stone’ used by founder Joseph Smith”:

The LDS Church provided a new glimpse of its origins Tuesday by publishing the handwritten “printer’s manuscript” of the Book of Mormon and photos of the “seer stone,” a dark, egg-size polished rock founder Joseph Smith claimed to have used to produce the faith’s sacred scripture.