I’ve been ruminating on this one all day. My gaming career goes back to the first decade of the wider hobby (if we take the publication of D&D as that point) but while I’m proud to claim Grognard status, I think the Ancient Days of gaming ended a few years before that, so there’s no personal anecdotes or items I feel I can share… or are there?
I picked these up at a Sunday market when I was 10 (1985). My father extorted six hours of yard cleanup work out of me to advance me the 60 cents I needed (the question “What did you do with the pocket money I gave you yesterday?” and the answer “Spent it on lollies” did not impress him. I wanted these so much because they seemed like ancient artifacts to me at the time, even though they were younger than I was. I would have wanted any D&D stuff, any roleplaying stuff, but these seemed very special.
I guess they still do.
I remember the feeling of discovering older and somehow “grown up” RPG material in in the 80s. To me as a pre-teen, RuneQuest was an intellectual and unapproachable game played by college students.