There was almost universal outrage on Monday as a set of false teeth and a briar pipe belonging to Professor J.R.R. Tolkien went up for sale on eBay. The unknown seller was asking $10,000 dollars for the two items, along with documentation proving their authenticity and their key role in the fashioning of the War of Middle Earth. ‘You can even see where the Professor chewed his pipe as he made the key decision to kill off Golum,’ read the product description. ‘Just think: these are the first teeth to ever utter the words: “My precious…”‘

Tolkien fans have been quick to condemn the sale. ‘This is so utterly monstrous,’ said one member of a Lord of the Rings message board, ‘it could only be the work of the Dark Lord Sauron himself.’ Others were more circumspect. Henry Landis, one of eBay’s fiercest critics and author of eBay Babylon: A Brief History of Knocked Off Gear, confessed that news of the sale had not come as much of a surprise. ‘In the last twelve months, we’ve seen the attempted sale of Charlie Chaplin’s artificial hip, Oliver Hardy’s moustache, and Cary Grant’s plummy English voice box. If anything, I would have thought that false teeth belonging to Tolkien would have brought a higher asking price, especially when a single buckshot chipped molar belonging to Ernest Hemmingway recently went for $25,000 dollars.’

Hopes that the dentures would reach that price ended three hours into the auction when eBay removed the items from their listings. Tolkien experts had raised concerns over the state of the teeth, pointing out that Professor Tolkien’s favourite shag tobacco, known as Old Toby, could not have stained teeth to the extent apparent in the eBay photograph (above). ‘Those are not his teeth,’ said Tolkien authority, Dr. Lewis Plug. ‘They are simply too stained, too crooked, and look almost orcish. As everybody knows, the Professor was actually half Grey elf.’

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