The day I walked into the room above the Student Union Building that the campus gaming group reserved, first Sunday of freshman year, I discovered my inner roleplayer, minifigs, the first edition first printing AD&D books, the Queen of the Geeks effect, and Dragon Magazine, all at once. Most of the articles were beyond me on that day, but hey - Finneous Fingers, Fred, and Charly! I met the cartoonist at an SCA event once, but that's another story.
Giants in the Earth. The old logo with the dragon head in the tail of the G. The upside-down Martian Metals ads on the back, originally mistaken for printer's errors until you read the note at the bottom informing us that the ad was right way round and our silly Earth magazine was upside down. My friends' getting up a little dice-bag-making business and advertising in Dragon. "Does your Vorpal blade go snicker-snack, or does it only snicker? Maybe your dice don't like the bag you keep them in!"
And once upon a time Dragon was a fiction venue. I remember a story that anticipated MMPORGs before anyone I knew had an internet connection. I remember that REH rip-off Niall of the Far Travels. And I twice placed my own fiction there, two-part short stories in which the situation was set up in familiar folk-tale format and the resolution was in modern style with a POV character in the "present day" of the fantasy world dealing with the repercussions of the original story. "The Waiting Woman" riffed off of the tradition of the sleeping army waiting for the day of great need, and "The Mother" off of La Llorona. (I just sold a story in similar format to Realms of Fantasy; watch for "The Singers in the Tower;" end of shameless plugging.)
When I went to my first gaming convention - my first con of any kind, at Texas A&M, and went into my first dealer's room, I found a guy selling back issues of Dragon and bought one of everything he had. I was cheap in those days (my entire monthly budget was $150), but these zines were mostly going for under five bucks and I knew they'd get harder to find rather than easier. My gaming friends looked them over, approving some purchases and bewildered by others, like the one with the cover story on Napleonic wargaming ("Why would you want to read about Napleonics?") but I instinctively knew something they didn't about the subculture mentality.
Although I've never realized a monetary profit from those issues, my instinct was justified several years later when I met my husband, a man with the Rampant Completist Collector gene. He'd never even seen some of the early numbers I'd picked up, even though he started gaming earlier than I did. The Napoleonics issue gave him great joy. I wouldn't sell to him, but when we married the collections were merged and he is now the proud half-possessor of a complete set. He says it'd feel more complete if it went to 360, though.
