I'm kind of reluctant to give out a complete solution yet, since there has only been one winner so far, and there are still eight autographed pictures to give out as prizes; I'll put up a walkthrough when those are won and the contest is over.

A few people have nearly won, lacking just one nickel for total victory. Since that last nickel seems to be a sticking point, here's a hint for that elusive nickel:

One of nick's phrases (which you can discover by doing real detective work and searching the flash movie for ASCII text, as winner Dan did) is "There was a nickel in the return slot"