30-Disc Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit Collector's Edition Revealed

Whether you've held out on buying the extended editions of the Lords of the Rings and Hobbit films or are simply a sucker for a nice collector's edition, you may want to brace your wallet for an upcoming collection.

As revealed by a listing on Amazon, the Middle-earth Limited Collector's Edition is a special collection comprised of a whopping 30 discs. It comes with the lengthy extended edition versions of each of the six movies that make up the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies; this includes "all previously released bonus content" for the movies. Some of the bonus features come on DVDs, but the movies themselves are on Blu-ray; you also get digital copies of them all, too.

Beyond the movies themselves, there's more included to make this of interest even for those who have bought them previously. There's a 100-page replica of The Red Book of Westmarch (the book being written by Bilbo and Frodo) that contains sketches made for the movies and new artwork. There are also reproductions of paintings done by Alan Lee and John Howe (two prolific Tolkien artists who worked on the films) that are described as "framable and wall-ready."

The movies each come inside a faux leather book, which are housed on a "Hobbit-style" wood shelf made of solid wood. Director Peter Jackson is said to have selected the design for it.

Amazon lists this for an October 4 release, but without a price. Amazon price tracker CamelCamelCamel shows it was originally posted for $800. I daresay that feels unreasonable for movies that you could get for no more than $100, even with some admittedly nice-sounding bonuses. It's possible the price was an error, but we won't know until the page is updated or an official announcement is made.