The item fetched 1150 euros.

IIRC the price for the Silm was £100.00 The 3-volume LotR was £250.00 - too much for me at the time. I remember seeing two of them for sale years later, in Forbidden Planet, for £150.00 So I snapped one up. Wish I'd gone for both of them, now.

Oh, well.

Jeepers! I paid thr RRP for this book when it first came out. And the Hobbit, too. Oughta have bought half a dozen. Hindsight is 20/20, ain't it?

:-/

Oh, and Tolkien might have gotten the idea of Gollum from a cave in Ireland. Which he didn't visit till 1949. And The Hobbit was published in... 1933. I quote:

"For many years now there has been words written about the character of Gollum who appears in 'The Hobbit' book published in 1933 but whom I'm told only gets a more developed persona in 'The Lord of the Rings'.

The Burren is home to the largest cave system in Ireland... It comprises of 15 miles of underground passages. This entrance is called Pol na gColm (translated from the Irish as the Hole of Gollum). The 'Book of the Burren' by Ann Korff, says 'Gollum' in Irish means 'rock dove'.. Of course the other coincidence is that rock doves make a guttural sound, same as Gollum in the book. "

see here: http://www.worldirish.com/story/30506 ... 3-reasons-why-it-might-be

In one post, the Burren Tolkien Society repeat almost verbatim part of a letter which Tolkien wrote to his grandson about Ireland, as published in Scull & hammond Vol.II under 'Ireland'. They give the name of the grandson as 'George Christopher'. Despite the fact that the book they were copying from actually gives the correct name!

Edit: Page 431 of the Reader's Guide

Trotter