STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. This could happen to anybody. You want to play a chess game, but one of the rooks is missing. Happened centuries ago, apparently. Five chess pieces vanished in Europe. The remaining pieces are the Lewis chessmen, carved in walrus ivory in the 1100s. Most are artifacts in the British Museum. Now one of the missing pieces turned up on a Scottish island. A man bought it decades ago for 5 British pounds, and now it may be worth 1 million. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.