So here is my tip of the day, which I hope will save some poor collector a few bucks.

I love the Stern pinball machine. Love it, lust for it, can't afford it, don't have the room, even if I could. Having played (ha! loose description!) it, I fell in love with the artwork and the little figures inside.

Taking a shortcut to the house one day, Hello! I realize that one of the largest gaming distributors in the country is in my backyard. Literally.   So I go bundling in, past the object of my desire, back to the parts department.

"Can you order me a set of the figures from the Stern Lord of the Rings pinball machine?" I burble to the man behind the counter, batting my eyelids violently at him.

He pulls out a three inch thick catalogue. "Well, Miss" (only under eyelid batting exingencies will I ever tolerate someone calling me "Miss") "We can get them, but are you sure? They're quite expensive."

Bat. Bat. Bat.   "I must have them. They are for my, uh,  friend."   (Rule #1 of LOTR collecting: Never admit to strangers what you do for a hobby. Always mack it off to some lunar third person. "Oh, cough cough, I only buy these figures because my, uh,  nephew collects them. What would ever make you think that I, a respectable, professional, matronly mother of two, would have any possible use for these?" *nervous laugh*      Ultimately, the cashier at Target saw through me, and confided that she, too, collects action figures.)

"OK, Miss (*grits teeth*), sure thing, but you'll have to prepay these, and plan on about four weeks for them to arrive."

Fade out to four weeks of impatient, foot hopping waiting, and then the phone rang at work one day. "Oh, Miss....."

I immediately left work, trucked it on over to the distribution warehouse, and collected my booty, rushing home to pore over it in the silence of The Shrine.

The figures were beautifully painted, in scale, and carefully packed on plastic trays, in sealed bags. Just lovely. Gleefully I gloated that I had surely scored a coups over the other collectors with this little prize.

I began to unpack the first figure, and put it on the shelf with some of the other action figures who live there, when it hit me. Frodo looked awful familiar.  Not the "his face peers at me from every corner of the room" type of familiarity, but that sense of, "I've seen this exact figure somewhere before" familiarity.

I had a quick look around, wracking my memory, but it just wouldn't come to me. Must be my imagination, I thought. After all, I see so much of the little hero. I stepped back to admire his place on the shelf when it hit me in the gut. Stern Pin-ball Frodo was standing directly in front of the Armies of Middle Earth boxed Frodo, and the two figures were indentical.

Quickly, I pulled the other figures out, and to my horror, every last one of them was identical to the AOME figures.

The gorgeous Stern Pin-Ball figures are nothing but AOME figures. Nothing more, nothing less.

I will not shame myself and tell you how much money I spent to special order these figures (shame, and the fact that my husband occasionally reads these pages).  But go out and buy a nice steak dinner on me, with what I've just saved you. Heck, buy four or five or six.

You'll still come out ahead.

*sigh*..................................................