D&D General What is your most prized Dungeons and Dragons Product?

[Echohawk]

I love this thread, but I'm not sure I can pick out just one prized D&D possession. I've been collecting D&D stuff for quite a while now, so I'm lucky enough to have a copy of every English-language* D&D RPG book** sold in game stores*** over the last five decades. (Yes, storage is an issue.)

A few favorites from my collection:

• Dungeon Masters Guide (1e): This was the very first D&D book I ever bought, so it holds a lot of sentimental value.
• The Jade Hare: This is a forgettable product, but it is rare (and hence valuable) and only eight pages. That means it is currently worth 70% of the price of gold per gram, which I find amusing.
• Dragon #1: Collecting full sets of Dragon, Dungeon, Polyhedron and Imagine magazines was challenging. There were some issues that were incredibly tricky to get without paying excessive amounts (and some for which I sadly did end up paying excessive amounts). If I had to pick one item to represent all the periodicals it would be the first issue of Dragon. In case you are wondering, Dragon #1 is worth roughly 25% of the price of gold per gram.
• Miniature reprints: Collecting these tiny reprints (from around 1999/2000) certainly put my internet search skills to the test. I note that the words "miniature" and "dungeons & dragons" are not useful search terms when scouring eBay.
• A D&D chair: Sometime this century, branded D&D folding chairs were distributed to FLGS participating in a promotion. I ended up with one of these, and I have to confess that it has not been treated as a collectable, but as a really useful piece of furniture that sees constant use and is now looking quite battered. But I love my D&D chair.

I'm sure that an even-more-favorite favorite will spring to mind the second I post this, but those are a few items that immediately sprang to mind.

* I have made no attempt to collect non-English D&D products. Not even those rare Hebrew and Japanese products that don't have English equivalents.
** I don't collect D&D novels, although I do still have quite a lot of those.
*** I definitely do not have a copy of everything ever printed for D&D. There have been so many RPGA and other organised play adventures, convention modules, FLGS give-aways and obscure promotions that I'm confident that nobody does. My cut-off point is collecting stuff that was sold in stores.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Probably the two thoroughly-beaten-up booklets from the old Red Box. (The box itself is long gone.)

That's where it all started.

Same. For an emotional connection, it doesn't get stronger than them in my RPG collection.

 

[Marc Radle]

Dragon #1: Collecting full sets of Dragon, Dungeon, Polyhedron and Imagine magazines was challenging. There were some issues that were incredibly tricky to get without paying excessive amounts (and some for which I sadly did end up paying excessive amounts). If I had to pick one item to represent all the periodicals it would be the first issue of Dragon. In case you are wondering, Dragon #1 is worth roughly 25% of the price of gold per gram.

Respect!

I have an almost complete set of Dragon magazines, but issue #1 so far eludes me ...

You can read about my quest here:
The Quest for One Thousand Dragons (Part 1 of 2)
The Quest for One Thousand Dragons (Part 2 of 2)

 

[Echohawk]

I have an almost complete set of Dragon magazines, but issue #1 so far eludes me ...

Dare I ask if you are also planning on collecting the seven issues of The Strategic Review which predated The Dragon?

Respect!

Thanks. It was significantly easier to collect anything D&D related before the 5e boom!

 

[Marc Radle]

Dare I ask if you are also planning on collecting the seven issues of The Strategic Review which predated The Dragon?

Thanks. It was significantly easier to collect anything D&D related before the 5e boom!

Great question!

My current plan does not include collecting those ... but, you never know!

 

[Remathilis]

This.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Pretty easy one for me - my Time of the Dragon boxed set. No other D&D product has been remotely as influential on me, and I still have the books around, where most of my older RPG stuff is in storage. The two books are pretty battered now because I still look at them sometimes.

The Taladas setting it created was unlike anything else at the time, and still I don't think there's really much comparable, because it had unusual influences - being basically influenced by the Dark Ages and South and Central Europe (including equivalents of the WRE/Late Rome and ERE/Byzantium) and Eurasia (particularly the steppes), and parts of Oceania, as well as some more pure fantasy stuff, like a crumbling apartheid society (just begging for renewal as a unified one), a little democracy full of the outcasts of other nations, jungle elves constantly hunted by degenerate mind flayers, and so on. It also, and note this was the very first setting book for 2nd Edition (!!!), had playable Goblins, Ogres, Lizardmen, Minotaurs and others. The cultures it described were rich in detail and atypical for fantasy, and often did stuff that was pretty daring/progressive for 1989 (like one of the steppe tribes only let women be wizards, but people born male could choose to identify and live in all ways as women in that culture, including becoming wizards - there was no judgement, homophobia/transphobia or titillation about this either, it was just treated as any other cultural factor). The most dangerous steppe tribes were elves and half-elves, which was a real swerve for how elves were typically written in that era or even decades later. The goblins and ogres were misunderstood rather than evil, but not in a lame/twee/preachy way, they were just bordered by aggressive human or elf cultures and didn't have the cultural and technological tools to assert themselves. Further, the book had an incredible chart showing how the languages of the continent related to each other (or didn't!) in a way that felt so infinitely more real than "I guess everyone speaks common".

I've probably got other stuff worth a lot more, and likely in a lot better condition, but it's the one I prize most by far.

 

[Nebulous]

I didn’t even know this was a thing!

It is a really excellent DMG expansion. I don't hear people talk about that one much.

 

[Nebulous]

Original copy of Saga of Old City by Gary Gygax. This screams D&D. Also, the original Endless Quest books, like Return to Brookmere by Rose Estes. These were products I had before I was really playing the game much. Like precursors.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm not a stuff guy..... And I sold most of my non minis when we moved..... But I've been gifted terrain and minis by players over the years. It's 100% those gifts from friends.