You raise an interesting point,
Inziladun. It appears, however, to be the case that Sauron, when making the One Ring,
permanently transferred much of his power into it, to be able to bind the wearers of the other Rings of Power. For this reason, the Ring's destruction would be such that Sauron would be incapable of taking physical form again, which turned out to be the case.
This is what marked the One Ring out from being just an '
object'. If this was the case, why didn't Sauron just make a replacement 'object', instead of spending so much time looking for the original?
I agree that Gollum, due to his great age, would die very quickly if he was still alive once the Ring was destroyed.
This great age does raise an interesting issue. How was Gollum still so capable of both looking after himself and travelling despite being over 500 years old?
