Gollum managed to keep the One Ring safe in his possession for approximately 478 years. His cave is very well hidden, the goblins living nearby appear to be unaware of it and aside from Bilbo's visit there doesn't seem to have been any threat to him continuing to hold onto it indefinitely.
Did Tolkien highlight what would have happened if Bilbo hadn't recovered the Ring (or if Gollum had somehow died in his cave)? Would the Master Ring have simply remained undetected for the foreseeable future?
Answer
The Ring was actively trying to get back to its true master, Sauron. It had abandoned Gollum in hope of being picked up by someone more likely to get it back to Sauron, probably a Goblin or Orc.
LOTR, Book I, Ch. 2 The Shadow of the Past:
‘A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo.It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care – and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.’
‘What, just in time to meet Bilbo?’ said Frodo. ‘Wouldn’t an Orc have suited it better?’
‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Gandalf. ‘Not for you. It was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo’s arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark.
‘There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!
‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.’
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