Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj jointly purchase a box, whose contents are unknown, for $60 at a garage sale. While sorting through it, they find that it contains primarily pop culture related items. They are happy with some of the contents, and less so with others. But when one of Howard's friends verifies the authenticity of one of the items, the guys think they've won the lottery when in their possession is the missing (stolen) one of only nine in total rings used in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Being a stolen item, the ring has no open market value, but they determine its black market value is in the range of $10,000 to $15,000. The four argue about to who among the four the ring rightly belongs, and thus who decides what to do with it. They agree to let Penny hold onto it until they decide. After an incident with Sheldon, Penny doesn't want to be the keeper of the ring anymore. Howard comes up with what all four agree is an amenable solution as to who gets to decide the ring's fate.