I remember there being specific patterns of what D&D books people owned in the 1980s. However it's something that doesn't appear on any of the collectors' lists, which catalog everything available from publishers. Here's what I recall, heavily weighted to generation (middle school early in the decade, college late in the decade) & geography (Houston):

The Holmes basic set & the Moldvay Expert set. I had Moldvay Basic, but I & everyone I knew learned the game from the Holmes booklet. The Expert set appears to have been purchased gratuitously, as we would all skip directly to AD&D. I don't remember anyone with the Mentzer Basic set, as I suppose everyone my age had learned the game by then.

The original five hardbacks. Fiend Folio may have been redundant, but you gotta love that Eddie-from-Iron-Maiden cover. No one got the orange spine versions, as the infinitely superior originals were still on the shelves new as late as '86 ('82 for Holmes). They would get MMII, Unearthed Arcana, & Oriental Adventures to incorporate sporadically (did anybody actually use comeliness?).

All the local game stores had the OD&D line (from the early-to-mid '80s), while B. Dalton & Waldenbooks had Chainmail. I don't know who was buying, as I didn't know anyone who owned them, much less used them.

Minis. What gaming collection could be complete without a cigar-box-load of toxic lead? Usually a chaotic pile of the unpainted, semi-painted-before-giving-up, & maybe even a few well-done examples. What I don't remember is actually using them very much. At most, we would put them out in a token gesture of practicality ("to establish marching order" or somesuch justification). Better to imagine the attacking succubus in your mind.

Brand-X products. I knew a couple of groups who were deeply involved with Chaosium games by the mid-'80s, but the average gamer's collection would contain only one or two of these, & they would put them to as much use as Mentzer Expert (that is, often not at all). Gross commercializations like DragonQuest or Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway. Wargames like Squad Leader or War of the Ring. Boardgames like Dark Tower.

Is this what you remember?

Summer of '78. Holmes box set.

The guys that introduced me to the game took me to the store where they got that. City-Wide Hobby Shop in Baltimore. I was a frequent buyer of D&D material there until they closed up shop sometime when I was in high school (mid 80's).

We wound up going straight to AD&D, so we got the MM, PHB, DMG (original covers) and I went on to D&DG, FF, MMII. Don't recall seeing any OD&D or B/X stuff there except a few mods and I once had a copy of Eldritch Wizardry. Do remember seeing a few Armory products, and saw Classic Warfare by some guy named Gygax.

Between us, we had A1-4, B1 (in the Holmes set), B2, C1-2, D1-3, G1-3, L1, Q1, S1-4, and T1. Plus the M&T assortments, some Geos, WoG Folio, and our first minis were Grenadier's gold series, though I recall some Minifigs and Asgard being available.

We also had picked up a bunch of Revell-style 1/72 scale minis for ancients, like greeks, egyptians and romans, but those were mostly for battles like we did with our green army men rather than for use in D&D games.

Hi, from what I can tell the nationwide explosion of interest in D&D was fueled by the Egbert incident (1980) and the Random House distribution network that Gary negotiated (1980? 1981?).  I got in during that time.

Very early on, there was a lot of talk on the school grounds because D&D was an expensive ripoff.  It was cool, but they tried to rip off your saved allowance by printing the same and even conflicting information in different products.  (Keep in mind this is the 10-year-old version of history, which cuts closer to the bone.   )  As a result, several dozen of us collaborated to recommend the best products for the dollar.

We had the Holmes set early on, but could barely make sense of it.  So I got the Moldvay Basic set which made much more sense.  Opinions were high for the PHB, DMG and MM.  Color-covered modules (Q1, S2, C2, etc.) sold well and monochromes did not.  (You must admit, the inflation-adjusted price for monochrome G1 at 8 pages is pretty outrageous.)  White boxes and OD&D supplements were the prime ripoffs, with bad art and confused rules written by crazy people.    Geomorphs and treasure assortments were actually fairly well regarded because they offered something to game play.

By 1982 things were pretty entrenched with most people owning the Moldvay Basic set at least, and then some mixture of Expert, AD&D hardcovers and a pile of miniatures.  Grenadier vs. Ral Partha was a big debate.  Grenadier had the license and had the most accurate figures, RP had prettier casts and better sculpting.

Deities & Demigods was the ultimate book of 400 hit point monsters to kill for maximum experience points; those who were accused of power gaming pointed to Jim Ward / Monty articles in Dragon and said they were playing the "right" way.

By 1983 the craze had cooled off.  Those of us still in the game were hardcore and those too cool to play had dumped their sets on their kid brothers and sisters, who we taught.  Unearthed Arcana caused the irrevocable split in the gaming group, and Gygax leaving convinced everyone but me that the game had jumped the shark.  (Back then it was called "selling out like your mom.")

There was a minor resurgence with 2E, which was killed when our local game store owner brought back some strange cards from Gen Con, which turned out to be Magic: The Gathering alphas.  From 1995-2000 I made quite a living off of those.  In 1994 I traded $1,500 of D&D books and modules in for store credit ($375) and bought MTG beta booster boxes.  I think I sold everything for about $28,000 in the end ...

I traded quite a bit through the late 90s but the local gaming scene was mostly dead; eBay caused the resurgence.

sauromatian wrote:

ashmire13 wrote:a massive amount of Games Workshop/Citadel figures

These became a big deal in the US by '87 with the slotta era. By the early '90s, the active gamers I knew had pretty much abandoned RPGs for Warhammer. More effort & expense in a lot of ways, but you don't have to get into character

I never went the WH route, stuck firmly with AD&D but loved collecting the slotta minis as they came out, regularly having a dozen or more in primer and the same in various levels of paint ready to use. Although, in honesty, I ended up putting pretty much all of them into a display case lol

We started with the Holmes basic set. Then we got PHB's and Monster Manuals. We played that wierd game for a while; the Holmes rules didn't precisely mesh with the Players Handbook and the Monster Manual. We were only eleven besides and reading comprehension wasn't our strong point. I remember going into Waldenbooks every other week or so and asking after the DM's Guide, but they never had any in. I think we finally got them about 4 months later.

There were 4 of us in the group and we each had to have our own books. We eventually got all of the hardbacks. We never did use miniatures or modules excepting for In Search of the Unknown.

started out with a Holmes blue book from a bucket and spade shop on the beach at west Wittering, Lord only knows why they stocked a small amount of d&d under the glass counter top!
iirc that would have been the summer of 1980, so I would havegot the three hardbacks in November for my birthday and Christmas. (dmg birthday and other 2 Xmas)

for the next7 or 8 years I bought loads of stuff pretty much indiscriminately, often based on white dwarf open box reviews. it was all read enthusiastically but most never used in anger. as I remember almost none of my friends had any kind of an extensive collection , most just had core books and that was enough - quite sensible looking back!!

and then I gave it all away, so much for foresight.

happy days though.

Summer of 1980 saw an advert for Moldvay Basic in Azimov magazine.  B-day in Sept. so I ask for (and actually got) the set!     From there my friend got the Moldvay Expert set and with in a year we were entrenched in a highschool group that was playing 1st Ed. AD&D.  We mixed and matched (using mostly AD&D but with D&D initiative due to simplicity.)  Addiction went on from there and my collection grew exponentially.  When we played it was mostly AD&D core books with UA and Monster books as they were released.  Chewed through a mix of modules and home made adventures.

PM-Knight wrote: I ended up purchasing the White Box edition (non-OCE), Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, and Gods, Demi-Gods, & Heroes supplements.

So what's the deal with Swords & Spells? The line-up you had is what's often seen in OD&D collections on eBay, with all the numbered supplements & perhaps Chainmail as well, but no S&S. Yet it was the only published way of handling large-scale combat in D&D until the Battlesystem rules a decade later. Was miniatures wargaming really so unpopular? Maybe we should re-write history: after early development among wargamers, D&D's true peak popularity came from players who had no interest in using figures in an actual game. It would be the later mainstream acceptance of Warhammer that brought this style of play to the fore, leading in turn to WotC's D&D skirmish game & mini-centric 4e.

silver_beetle wrote: Everyone had the Holmes set, but this was right around when the Moldvay set was coming out, so I saved and saved and got the Expert set, which, to my dismay, was a continuation, not a starting point.

In retrospect, all of these bought-but-unused Moldvay Expert sets were a lost opportunity. It includes much of the DMG's material about gaming in different environments, fills in the extra bits you'd want from starting with Holmes (like variable weapon damage), & Basic + Expert came with a good variety of scenarios (even a campaign world).  The two boxes cost $22, compared with three core hardbacks + Greyhawk folio + two modules + two blister packs of Dragon Dice = nearly 3x as much for AD&D.

After decades of playing, the most efficient rules seem like the best. But as kids we were seduced by quantity over quality, buying two redundant systems with loads of stuff we would never use.