Mark Presley bought the world’s oldest hockey stick on a whim.

He saw it hanging on the wall of George Ferneough’s North Sydney, N.S., barbershop, where it had been on display for more than 25 years after being given to the shop by local resident Charlie Moffatt.

“It was so folksy,” said the 44-year-old Berwick, N.S., resident, who was “terrified” to tell his wife what he paid for the “old chunk of wood.”

Four years later, the stick he paid $1,000 for could be worth more than $2 million.

After Presley announced his plans to sell the stick in early October, CBC News reported that Ferneough, who is now retired, feels ripped off.

“I think I should get a little cut,” he told the CBC on Thursday.

The stick’s estimated value is based on the sale of the famous 1850s Rutherford stick for more than $2.1 million U.S. at a 2006 auction, according to VIPthrills.com.

But Presley’s stick has since been dated back to the 1830s by both scientific and historical research.

Ferneough’s reported resentment has Presley “feeling badly.”

“When I made the purchase I wanted to give a fair price, but I had no idea what it was worth,” Presley said.

An avid collector and hockey fan, Presley originally wanted to display the stick in his den. He finds the 175-year-old stick “magical” because it was created for a kid to play a game, he said.

But after talking at the barber’s suggestion to the then 92-year-old Moffatt, who has since passed away, Presley realized the stick could be much older than he originally thought.

He took it to Colin Laroque, a tree-ring scientist at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. Because of a knot in the flat top of the stick, Laroque dated the tree to between 1835 and 1838. He even found five layers of paint on the stick that match popular paints used over the years.

Laroque has since assessed about a dozen similar sticks (after all, people don’t play hockey alone), but Presley’s is the only one with enough rings to accurately predict its age — a “needle in the haystack,” he said.

Charlie Moffatt’s wife Joyce supports Presley in his sale, according to the CBC. Without him, the excitement about the stick wouldn’t exist, she told the network.

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James Milks, president of the Society for International Hockey Research, wouldn’t venture a guess as to how much someone will pay for the stick, but he hopes it ends up in a place where the public can see it.

“It’s worth a fortune to Canadian culture and history,” Milks said.