I first started by collecting Pokemon cards, but I didn't know how to play it. When that died down, my friend introduced me to yugioh, a game where I could actually play, instead of looking at cool pictures all the time.
edit: haha. since we're talking about the good ole days, I remember when me and my friend thought that a bigger deck was a better deck so every pack we got, we just piled it onto our decks:D that was fun.