Rare Lurtz with Bow Pose

So this mini has a bit of a story behind it. I started collecting GWs Lord of the Rings line shortly before I got married. I am an avid collector and strive to get everything in the line, so by the time I got married in 2003 I had started a pretty nice collection. Between 2003 and 2009 my lovely wife and I ended up moving six times, throw in an apartment for me during an internship and that makes seven times that I moved. I had done everything I could to keep track of what I have in spite of GW continuosly changing thier packaging and naming conventions for minaitures.

So fast forward to the present. At this point I have nearly everything readily available. Naturally, I started to focus my attention on rare poses, unlreleased stuff, etc. So when I saw that the Lurtz with Bow pose was considered rare, I was all excited becasue I remember when it came out and remembered purchasing it. I wanted to dig it out of my backlog of 100s of miniatures I have to paint, and much to my dismay I could not find it.

During one of my moves, I was fairly certain I had left one box behind that contained a LEGO Mellenium Falcon. I thought the worst, and suspected that somewhere during the seven moves in seven years, I had left a box behind. As I thought more about it, I could think of other poses I had in my list that I knew I had bought and didnt recall seeing, some a bit hard to come by today such as the original pose of Saruman holding the palantir, and some I just knew I had like Uruk-Hai shaman.

Back to the back log. I dug out every box I had and went through every boxed set and blister. In the first box my spirits rose when I found Saruman. They rose yet again when I found the shaman. But still no Lurtz. Finally, on the 24th and final box (side note, this is the only time I find it relevant that it was in the last place I looked, because it was the last box. People say that all the time, "its always in the last place you look Randy!" No shit Sherlock, what idiot would keep looking for something after he already found it?), there it was, in a bag full of loose miniatures that I had bought when you could buy individual Modor Orcs from the FotR release.

Now I have tons of models that I have never felt I had enough skill to paint. I have done very few of the actual named characters in the movie/books, always deciding to hold off until my skill improved and could do them justice. I decided to stop being a wuss, and go ahead and paint this rare mini. Here is the finished product. Let me know what you think: