For those of you that was into swapping/mailtrading, what is your best memories from this era of scening?

Was it the excitement you felt each time you went to check the mailbox? Was it the joy of checking the stuff on the disks, or reading the letters from your contacts? Maybe it was a combination of those?

Hope to read about your best memories from the days of mailtrading. :)

Best memory: My Mam shouting that the postman was at the door each day with another 'bag' for me.

:)

Do you remember stamp faking? I wrote an article on it in The Word which got a mention in the Amiga magazines (probably have a copy somewhere). I had to go see the head guy at the local sorting office to retrieve my parcels one time. I was told to contact those sending me parcels with these 'waxy substance coated stamps' to stop or they would have to take matters further.

I eased up on trading after that as I couldn't afford the stamps (I was a student). I'd get up to 10 jiffies a day on average Mon-Sat. It just wasn't sustainable. Plus the more contacts I had, the more repeats I got in contents. That's not entirely bad, if someone sent me a 5 disk software release and disk 3/5 was corrupt, chances are that 3/5 in the other jiffy was fine.

I used to trade with traders in Europe and USA back then. Can you imagine the costs today? Postage is based on size, weight, and value and with Royal Mail you have a 75% chance of it reaching its destination.

Fun times, lots of memories, lots of warez.

Kei


P.S

Second best memory: My little sister coming into my room one day and seeing D-COPY (or X-COPY, I forget which) on the screen and asking how the game works. "Does the zeros in the box on the right have to get to the bottom first?" heh.

I think these times hold a special place in everyone's hearts and I'll never forget laying in bed and listening to post coming thru the front door, hearing a loud THUD! and a smile appearing on my face. More warez! :)

I only had a handful of contacts really and swapped with just UK guys, as I was more into the friendship side of it and getting to know my contacts, instead of typing a few crappy lines in a .txt file and pumping out parcels tag lag.

I used to love compiling cat disks and sending 'em out with my latest jiffy's (sure I've got 'em in adf somewhere??)

It was quite sad when you got official looking letters stating that your contacts were quitting the scene but that was the emergence of the internet for you and that's another chapter in our lives....

Just to add.. I think I've still kept a few hand written letters for posterity from one of my old contacts. Andy Coleman (Raven) from Tunbridge Wells.. you out there m8y?

I never did any mailtrading myself as I had a couple of close friends I went to school with who had a lot of contacts, so I just used to pop around their houses with a ton of blank floppies and have a swapping session once a month.

That was great, getting copies of all the latest stuff and then rushing home to try it all out. Great memories.

I have a feeling that I traded with Sarek once, or someone with a similar alias that did gfx. Plus I had a contact called zYX! who created a compilation CD for me once.

Probably coincidences. I'll have to sort through the warez traders text letters I kept on floppy.

Kei

What was the compilation CD out of interest?

MP3s & music videos.

Kei

I did know a guy called Arsonystt who compiled some CD's called MiLKY WAY MAJiC STARZ. Some of which were themed around mp3s or music videos.

Wonder what happened to him though? :P

@zYX:

Dunno if you remember but you actually sent me two of those MiLKY WAY compils which were full of Sega/N64 emulation stuff. Pretty wicked collys and I've still got them as back up. :)

Yeah I remember sending them to you ages ago. I think there was over 30 MWMS compilations in total.