From The Dragon, #35, March 1980, is this form for the short-lived Dragon want ads.
In the Before Times, people with common interests would advertise for all kinds of goods and services in printed publications, like Dragon. That Dragon's circulation was big enough to sustain this service goes aways to showing how big the hobby was at that time.
In an article from the same issue, Gygax mentions that TSR was pulling in between $2-4 million that year and that Dungeons and Dragons was the most popular game that year including monopoly and scrabble. Also the circulation of Dragon was around 50,000.
Is your mind blown yet?
So what kinds of things were being advertised in The Dragon?
- A service to paint your miniatures realistically
- An inexpensive electronic 1-100 "randomizer"
- Fly Flight, the fly swatting simulation (think paper and pencil not computer)
I suppose BBS, eBay and social media take the place of want ads these days, but still these are great to read.
