I think I read the tablets were lost on the way West.
I found the tablets when I was putzing around in my garden. I’m in the process of retranslating them, with the help of my seer stones and a top hat. So far, the biggest surprise was one verse that said “DRINK MORE OVALTINE”.
A few said they saw them in the late 1820s (with "spiritual eyes")
Other than that...nope...the Mormons went West in the mid-1840s. Smith was dead by then. No Mormons saw these gold tablets in the 1830s and 1840s...and "spiritual eyes"??? (C'mon, now)
Well; according to official MORMON records...
After translation was complete, Smith said he returned the plates to the angel, although he did not elaborate about this experience.[130] According to accounts by several early Mormons, a group of Mormon leaders including Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and possibly others[131] accompanied Smith and returned the plates to a cave inside the Hill Cumorah.[132] There, Smith is said to have placed the plates on a table near "many wagon loads" of other ancient records, and the Sword of Laban hanging on the cave wall.[133] According to Brigham Young's understanding, which he said he gained from Cowdery, on a later visit to the cave, the Sword of Laban was said to be unsheathed and placed over the plates, and inscribed with the words "This sword will never be sheathed again until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and his Christ."[134]
Smith taught that part of the golden plates were "sealed".[135] This "sealed" portion is said to contain "a revelation from God, from the beginning of the world to the ending thereof".[136] Many Latter Day Saints believe that the plates will be kept hidden until a future time when the sealed part will be translated[137] and, according to one early Mormon leader, transferred from the hill to one of the Mormon temples.[138]