Your original die

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Yep, I still have my first set of dice (except the d10). Looking at them right now.
They came with the Basic set in 1982, and are a lovely, swirled, mud brown color, except for the d4, which is a sort of yellowish orange color. All the corners on all the dice are worn off, and the crayon is worn out of many of the numbers. I lost the d10 long ago, but I know exactly where it is. It's in my old bedroom at my Mom's house, it fell off the bed, rolled under the baseboard heating, and down a hole where the pipe for the heat came up through the floor. I should probably rip the floor up sometime, the poor little guy has been sitting down there for 20+ years now, with only a yellow lightsaber from Luke Skywalker (Bespin Outfit) to keep him company... D&D & SW, the stories of my childhood.

I also have my second set of dice which came with the Expert set a year later, those are light blue. I have several sets of those dice, as all the boxed sets my brother & I got after that had blue dice. And my third set is a set of clear crystal dice my cousin gave me, and I "inked" them with sparkly sapphire blue testors oil-based model paint. Came out damn good, and has held up for 18 years without fading.

 

[Imperialus]

I got my first set of RPG dice at a hobby store here in Argentina. They came inside a white paper box with a photocopy of the spanish basic red box D&D (or that's what I assume it was). Just like the book, they were cheap soft plastic knock-offs (they included a diamond shaped d6)...

[Hijack] Hey, just wondering but what was the name of the store you bought that from? I used to live in Buenos Aires about 10 years ago back when Magic was really popular and happened to live right next to the only comic book store that we knew of that sold Magic cards in english. I used to buy them and mark up the packs and sell them back to the kids at school. They had a bit of role playing stuff as well. I never bought any though, my Spanish was never quite good enough to follow the rules and my best friend's mom was a baptist so D&D was right out. He had to hide his magic cards under his mattress. [/hijack]

Oh, and my first set of dice were plain red though I'm not quite so old school to have started with the boxed set. My cousin tossed them in my direction one day since he was sick of me borrowing dice and said; "here these have been rolling like crap, play with them." I proceeded to roll two natural 20's in a row. From then on they were mine...

All that is missing from that set is the D4... I think I may have left it out to be stepped on by a parent at which point it took a quick trip to the garbage.

 

[the Jester]

My first set were from the red box. I still have the d20, but I think that's it- I might still have one of the d10s but I haven't seen it some time.

I do have quite a few dice from my early gaming years, just not many from that first set.

 

[Kuld]

My first was an orange D20 I had to ink in with a grease pencil. I lost it.

A friend of mine who started playing in 1974 has the best story though.

"In those days -you couldn't even BUY dice. So we made em!"

His first d4 was a wooden one he made in shop class. It's about the quality of a die you'd think a 12 year old would make in the mid-70s. The numbers were drawn on with a blue Bic pen.

I think he has a wooden d8 as well.

He lived in Calgary at the time. There simply WERE no dice to buy.

But he still has it. I think it's his most treasured die. And well it should be.

Not quite the Roman D20 from the first century that Christie'ssold for a bundle, but still pretty damn cool

That's awesome.
I still have my little greenies too. The edges are still nice and sharp but I use them rarely. Dice now days seem to be a little more rounded at the edges.

 

[wingsandsword]

My first polyhedral set were the ones that came with the basic D&D "Black Box" set from the early 90's. 1991 I think. Fairly stout plastic, in some pretty generic hues with black lettering. The d20 is a reddish orange, with edges a little more rounded than most dice, but not a lot. The d6 was actually crushed a little bit on one corner, was that way right out of the box when I bought it (typical early 90's TSR kwality).

That was 14 years ago, so I'm not to the 20 year threshold, but I'm getting there, and I still have every die from that original set.

 

[Gez]

My first (non-d6) dice weren't dice...

They were handcrafted wheels (a paper circle glued to a thin cork oak bark sheet, with a match staked in the middle, spin it like a whirligig, and when it stops, look on which number is the closest from the ground). The model was from that RPG in game-book format, Les Terres de Légendes (French version of Dragon Warriors). I discovered RPGs through the Fighting Fantasy-type game books, and they were sold by the same publisher.

These wheels were dropped in favor of real dice pretty soon, though.

 

[Li Shenron]

My first dice are still very young, but I bought a bunch of them at the same time so there is no really a single "first" d20 of mine.

my sister's dog ate them.

i recovered most of them.

...scary place in my head now

 

[diaglo]

My first was an orange D20 I had to ink in with a grease pencil. I lost it.

A friend of mine who started playing in 1974 has the best story though.

"In those days -you couldn't even BUY dice. So we made em!"

His first d4 was a wooden one he made in shop class. It's about the quality of a die you'd think a 12 year old would make in the mid-70s. The numbers were drawn on with a blue Bic pen.

I think he has a wooden d8 as well.

He lived in Calgary at the time. There simply WERE no dice to buy.

But he still has it. I think it's his most treasured die. And well it should be.

Not quite the Roman D20 from the first century that Christie'ssold for a bundle, but still pretty damn cool

i made my own dice too in shop.
edit: but they weren't my first set.

 

[Janx]

My first set was red gem dice from the Armory. Still have them, except for the d20. That one rolled a miss one two many times and I tossed it across the dorm room we were playing. It broke into 2 pieces. My DM kept it. He still has it after 10 years.

 

[Gwaihir]

I also have the original basic set d20, Yellow with blue numbers as well as the aforementioned rounded corners. It is proudly displayed next to the minature of my favorite character and the minature Michigan Helmet and the autographed Big Red Machine baseballs.