The immense poularity of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy has generated a burst of interest in the collectible bookmarks depicting characters from those movies. Add to that the renewed interest in the Rings books by J. R. R. Tolkien, whose readers are also captivated by the bookmarks, and you have a collection frenzy!

The most popular bookmarks by far are the laminated bookmarks from Antioch Publishing. They are approximately 1-1/2 inches wide, and 5-3/4 inches long, and come with shiny, colored tassels. These bookmarks were released in three main series, one corresponding to the release of each movie.

The Fellowship of the Ring set contains 13 bookmarks, 7 of which have golden-colored replicas of the One Ring on the tassel. It didn't take Antioch long to learn that collectors wanted a little something extra with their bookmarks.

The Two Towers series has 14 bookmarks, every one with a special "bead" on the tassel, two of which are One Rings. Other beads are in the form of a horsehead, elven leaf, swan, lizard, Balrog head, diamond symbol, Eye of Sauron, or clover symbol.

The Return of the King set consists of 9 bookmarks, all with One Rings, except one with a swan bead, and one with an elven leaf.

The problem with collecting all of these is that Antioch issued special sets of six with the TT and ROTK series, called Collectors Packs. TT had Treebeard, and ROTK had Samwise Gamgee. These included a unique bookmark not issued outside of the sets, plus 5 that had already been issued. This made ownership of the special bookmarks relatively rare, since most people did not want to buy 5 more bookmarks that duplicated ones that they already had.

Further adding to the confusion for some collectors was the fact that Antioch began to switch beads among the bookmarks as their stock of a particular bead ran out. This affected some individual bookmarks from the TT and ROTK series, as well as ones in the Collectors Packs. This resulted in some configurations of the Collectors Packs being relatively rare in the combination of beads on the tassels for given bookmarks.

Between the TT and ROTK sets, Antioch also issued the Gallery Expressions set of 8 bookmarks, made of fabric and wood, leather and metal, laser-cut folded ones, as well as ones that opened in a fanfold fashion to describe characters from the stories, or the lands of Middle-earth.

The realistic depiction of the characters on these bookmarks, and the artistic employment of colors and the elven language make these truly beautiful to own, whether or not one is a collector. Long after the movies have faded from the big screen, collectors are still searching for that special bookmark to complete their sets, or are cherry-picking the ones that hold special appeal to them.

As of early 2006, most of the bookmarks are still availble in eBay stores, such as Buys4Us Sales.