I joined in 2006, but how or why would be guesses  

I know I was in a bad place mentally back then and had been writing a lot of home brew and creating a world to try and escape in my head.
I was searching and using a lot of online utilities (I forget the site, but think it had the name Alan in it??) and whether I stumbled here one night before or after using  dragonsfoot I couldn’t tell you, but I know this site cost me a lot of money building a collection I then sold again 6-8 years later in another bad time  


Edit : found the utilities site, completely forgotten about it until trying to write this post
Alan's Dungeon Master Tools

Seems long dead though unless someone with interweb whizz can find its working again? I know in the past some geniuses were able to pull back sites from the dead somehow. Mars and “David” (a guy in Scotland, think he was poorly?) always managed to find archived sites or had some wizardry.  EDIT : faro

Not sure how I found it. But I remember being blown away.

Which then triggered extensive eBay trawling. Which then resulted in AuctionSieve in 2003.

Proud to be member number 2 after Foul on these here forums!

I was having trouble with a purchase from the Britty Kitty, aka Cougar-retard.  I googled his name and came across the "Cougarrinard is now using Ebay ID of littleprincessfreya" thread.  The more I read, the more I liked this community.  I joined, and I've loved it ever since.  

Holy smokes, I completely forgot I tagged him with that nickname in 2003. I thought I renamed him Littleprincessgaya after he morphed, but I don't see it anywhere. He was the M-bag fanatic.
I joined in June of 2003, looks like I was the 93rd person. I don't remember how I found it. 30 people joined in the first month, on November 5th and 6th there were 13 joiners, so I imagine someone told someones about it. Chromaticknight, Beasterbrook, Blackdougal, Cgould and/or Nev would know, they still post pretty regularly. Grodog would probably be able to recite the history of the Acaeum from pure memory.