In 1909, Father Otto Meyer MSC, a German Catholic missionary stationed on Watom Island in the Bismarck Archipelago, published a brief description of ‘prehistoric pottery’ found by chance near his mission station. Almost a century later, his publication is recognised as the earliest description of what is now known as Lapita-style decorated pottery, the most recognisable material remnant of the first humans to settle in island Melanesia and western Polynesia. At least five major museums, four European and one Australian, hold substantial collections of potsherds from Meyer’s initial chance find and subsequent excavations. However, documentation of these collections’ histories is fragmented and much is held in repositories other than museums. I draw on archival research in Australian and European institutions to illuminate the global journeys of these potsherds, the networks of missionary contact and scientific exchange along which they travelled, and their continuing significance for Pacific archaeology today.