[Child of the 7th Age]

Lyta,

For someone who is "not a collector" it sounds as if you have accumulated a pile of interesting things!

I have been hunting down books by and about Tolkien for a ton of years in garage sales, bookstores, and more recently on e-bay, and have gradually accumulated quite a pile. I have an overflowing bookcase in my dining room. However, I definitely don't have any swords and the only action figures in the house belong to my daughter. But I do collect calendars, old and new, and postcards. Some of my stuff goes back to the late sixties/early seventies. More recently, I'm buying the little Rawcliffe pewter figures one at a time.

Anyways, it's always a challenge to look for something a long time and finally manage to unearth it somewhere for a reasonable price. As you can tell from the tagline under my name, I am definitely partial to "Bilbo's Last Song". The first publication of that poem was actually in a poster from 1974--appropriately enough, the year after Tolkien died. It is a view of the harbor at the Havens with the sea in the distance and the poem overlaid in the center of the page. I found one on e-bay so it's now up in my house along with my other favorite posters.

There's one other purchase I'm making that I am "blaming" on Samwise!
[img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img] I always remember how she talked about getting the statue of Sam and Bill the Pony. My local fantasy store had just one left..... So now guess who has a Sam statue on layaway! I figured, if there was one character I wanted to remember from the movies just as he was played, it would be Sam. (I am fascinated by book Frodo, but Elijah Wood's Frodo, although good, just wasn't the same.)

Child