Short on talent but not on funds? You might be in luck. While it's too late to be considered for any of Sunday's Academy Award wins, you can bid on one of 15 Oscar statuettes on Tuesday. Or, hell, bid on them all. You can always pawn off the extras when you need to pick up a Tony or a Golden Globe.

I just hope you've got the disposable income to do it. The Los Angeles Times reports that these things are worth more than just prestige.

The sale of the statuettes, which include those awarded for such classics as "Citizen Kane," "How Green Was My Valley" and "Wuthering Heights," is expected to generate as much as $4 million in bids, according to auctioneer Nate D. Sanders.

You can check out the full list of Academy Awards up for grabs. The most impressive is arguably Herman Mankiewicz' 1941 Best Screenplay Oscar for Citizen Kane. But hey, maybe you've always been a fan of Charles Coburn's performance in the 1943 film The More the Merrier.

As usual, the academy is pissed — Oscars are earned, not purchased. You think Meryl Streep dons all that makeup for kicks? But as academy spokesperson Janet Hill explains, there's not a damn thing they can do about it.

Unfortunately, because our winners agreement wasn't instituted until 1950, we don't have any legal means of stopping the commoditization of these particular statuettes.

Perhaps they'll be lucky: in the past, high-profile auction winners like Steven Spielberg and Kevin Spacey have bid high simply to obtain the Oscars and return them to the academy. That's all well and good, but some of us may never win an Academy Award the old fashioned way. And even if an auctioned Oscar doesn't come with the pride of accomplishment, it does make for an excellent conversation piece.

[Image via AP]