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The famous bronze tripod from the Pourtalès?Gorgier collection in Berlin (Antikensammlung Fr. 768) is thought to have been found in Metaponto, but no other information on its discovery was know up to now. However, this article shows that it is mentioned in several documents of the Archivio di Stato di Potenza, and also in the accounts of two 19th Century scholars: the Swiss writer and traveller Charles Didier and the Italian archaeologist Andrea Lombardi. According to their accounts, the tripod was found in 1825 by illegal excavators from Anzi, but two different sites, Anzi and Castronuovo, are pointed to as discovery locations. This article tries to explain the contradiction through the analysis of different evidence, amongst which is unpublished archive material. It appears that the provenance of the tripod was not the Greek city of Metapontum, but an indigenous site of the Lucanian hinterland.