After weeks of hand-wringing, we've finally settled on a winner of our contest for LG's uber-limited $1,500 Iron Man edition Shine! We asked you to send in pictures of the busted-up pieces of garbage you call "phones," and holy cow, did we get some doozies.

Without further adieu, our winner, Mark H., comes to us from Novato, California. Here's his story:

"I need a new phone as you can see. I have had this Nokia phone since 2001. I'm in the military service and my friends make fun of my old phone and now they're really on me since my phone was run over by a car and I use electrical tape to keep the faceplate together. I don't get paid enough by the service to buy a nice new phone."

Congratulations, Mark! Even if this relic were in perfect condition, it'd still be time for an upgrade. Let's try to keep this one a little less scuffed, because that solid gold battery cover definitely does not live up to the "Iron Man" name. Follow the break for some honorable mentions -- you guys made it really hard to choose!

If ever there were an LG Shine to live up to its lofty name, this would definitely be it. We'd like to introduce you to the Iron Man phone -- presented here by our boy Robert Downey, Jr. -- based on the Shine slider as sold by AT&T. Unlike the garden-variety Shine, the Iron Man edition trades up to a deep red case with gold plated highlights and a solid 18K gold battery cover to commemorate the launch of the film in style. That's plenty enough element 79 to give this thing some serious heft. We're not bragging, though -- we want you to have it.

The phone is valued at a princely $1,500; twenty are being given away by LG directly -- we've got the twenty first. How do you pry it out of our hands? Easy: we want to see just how nasty, disgusting, and close to complete breakdown your current face candy is. Send us a pic and tell us a little bit about your poor, dilapidated phone and the long journey it's taken to its current state of disrepair. We'll pick the saddest entry and let you retire that terrible thing for something just a little flashier.

One word of advice though: don't bother breaking your phone or taking a photo of your dad's Dynatac or something, that's not what we're looking for.

Check out the gallery to see shots of the very Iron Man phone that could be yours, and don't forget to enter. Good luck!

The rules (yeah, there are always rules)

• Send us your original photo. If we find your picture elsewhere on the internet, you will so be disqualified. Don't test us here, we've seen every picture of every phone. Ever.
• Email submissions to contests [at] engadget [dawt] com with the subject "I am Iron Man!" And for the love of our inbox, please keep your images 1MB or under, ok?
  
• You may only enter this contest once. If you enter this contest more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc.
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
  
• Entries must be in by 11:59PM EDT, Sunday, May 18th. After that, give us some time to sort through the entries and pick out the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it).