GUEST: This was found on the property that I grew up in, uh, Middle Tennessee.
My mom found it, honestly, in a trash pile, probably sometime in the mid to late '70s.
At some point, we were told that it might be Native American and potentially a game that they played.
Um, but I just want to know more.
APPRAISER: This piece is what we call a discoidal or a chunkey stone.
It was for the chunkey game.
It is Mississippian culture, which dates to 1000 to 1500 A.D.
So they really predate European contact.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Tennessee is a hub for these, GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: and they have a very distinct style of these discs.
Short-handed term, we call them discs.
So typically, a Tennessee discoidal will have what we call a dimple in the center.
Yours doesn't have the dimple.
Instead, it has a hole.
They have different styles.
They go as far from an inch to... big, big guys.
You've got a nice size one.
So this piece is the same on both sides.
It was ground.
They're using stone instruments and wood instruments to grind these down into form.
So just think of how hard that would've been to use another stone to get this as soft and smooth.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And they'd nick it out and then smooth it with a stone, and nick it out and smooth it until they got the form that they wanted.
The game was a game where they would roll the piece and threw a lance.
It was an accuracy kind of game.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: At auction, on a bad day, I would expect this to go for $3,000 to $5,000.
GUEST: Wow.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
(laughs) Yeah.
I really just wanted to know more about it, and that's great.