Left in the late 80s when my friends and I all discovered cars, girls and hanging out at the lake over playing 1E and BECMI.
I did carry my 1E/BECMI materials around with me through college and then moving multiple times to where we have a house now. I did occasionally look at 2E/3E materials...
Whew. That's a lot.
Personally, I'm only a collector these days. I have not played D&D since the mid-80s. I have all of 1stEd on my bookshelf. Over Covid, I have all of 5e, every book. However, my threshold for "what crap I'll deal with" is very low. I've given up better hobbies for less. My...
I just pulled all of the old character sheets from the last 1E D&D sessions I ran for my Jr. High friends back in 1986. The three long time players had between them 54 active PCs that they had rolled at some point. I counted them up and they ranged from between 12 PCs for one guy, 18 for another...
I was the one to convince my friends to play. I was the one with the initial BE box sets as well as a couple 1st Ed books. I therefore became defacto DM with no experience at all as to how make it actually work.
It was glorious madness.
https://acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/dmscreen.html
I have the AD&D DM Screen (also includes a Player's screen). I believe it is the 9th printing version from 1985'ish.
I voted Mentzer's Red Box, but it was actually the Blue Expert that I first bought. Why? Because Waldenbooks didn't have the Basic box and I didn't know any better. Then I got UA. Why? Because it had classes and treasure in the same book! And Waldenbooks didn't have the DMG/PB that day and I...
The original title was "blatantly" offend. But even "gravely" works.
I generally assume a player is moving their character along in life within the assumed parameters of their class. A cleric believes. A warlock knows their pact...etc, etc.
If they want to "blatantly" or "gravely" offend that...
Which makes the entire premise of them granting warlock pacts very weird from the get go.
But the flip side is, since you can't even humanly fathom the minds of GOOs and why they did what they did in the first place, they could probably remove the pact simply by twitching an eyebrow the wrong...
I don't think you can go wrong with the 1E Orange Spine covers by Jeff Easley. The contents may be screwy, but even the Dungeon and Wilderness Survival Guides are stunning covers.
For 5E specifically, the upcoming Wild Beyond the Witchlight looks pretty good. I also liked Tasha's, Icewind...