The account, as set out in Latter-day Saint scripture and in the Church's historical materials, runs as follows. From 1823 Joseph Smith reported visits from the angel Moroni, who told him of a record buried in a hill near Manchester, New York. Smith said he obtained the plates in September 1827 and, over the following two years, dictated a translation with the aid of associates who served as scribes. The Book of Mormon appeared in 1830, prefaced by the Testimony of Three Witnesses, who described an angel presenting the plates, and the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, who described handling them directly. The tradition holds that after the translation Smith returned the plates to Moroni, which is why no object entered any collection. All knowledge of the plates therefore descends through the testimonies and Smith's own narrative rather than through a preserved artifact.
Joseph Smith reported receiving a set of gold-coloured metal plates, engraved with an ancient record he described translating into the Book of Mormon, from a hill near Manchester, New York, traditionally identified as the Hill Cumorah, in 1827, and, per his own account, returning them to the angel Moroni once the translation was complete, variously dated in different tellings to 1829 or later.