I can actually remember this. I was 12. I\'d just been introduced to Dungeons and Dragons for the second time (the first time was way back when the rules were scattered through Dragon Magazine and making a character took 12 issues)...
It was a Ral Partha Paladin with a pretty cool pose (I still have him. I\'ll post a pic later). I won the mini in a bet with a friend over who could throw a baseball farther.
He still has the original paint job (chipped and rubbed shiny and all), lacking primer, lacking base coat, lacking even the slightest hint of shading... and done with Testors model paints, and those big plastic brushes that came with the two-tiered \'wheel\' set.
What did I know?
I\'m a little better, now, I think, than I was then.
Second minis I got were two Ral Partha boxed sets. The Halflings and the Dwarves sets. I think I actually still have a few of them, too.
On a laughter side: I recently bought on ebay, a lot of 87 minis, and got a few of my old ones back that I\'d thought lost, years ago. With my initials still painted on the bottom of the bases. Somehow, they\'d gone south of the border, far to the west, and been picked up there.
Nostalgia....