This is Tom in Reston - an aol cd collector; we had some email contact a while back when I won one of your ebay auctions for an autographed book. :) Hey, I re-found your site when I saw a link to it elsewhere. Saw that you held an interesting chat on washpostponline -- neat! Well, I also see that you are attempting to hold one of the longest contests ever (lol), and luckily I still have time to submit my entry. Here goes:

My favorite item is the Brian Sasscer mailer. And no it's not because of his nifty sweater, tho I'm sure I had one just like it in that exact pastel. You asked for verification of the software version it contains. I don't think it's 2.0, rather 1.5. I'm attaching a pic of 4 variations of Brian.

The leftmost 2 with the purple borders are for DOS (one contains four 5 1/4 floppies and the other has a single 3.5 diskette; both are V 1.6 for DOS). The next one with the red borders is for the MAC, not sure what version since my pkg is still sealed. But the rightmost one with the green borders, just like the one on your site, is for Windows; and mine contains a v1.5 for windows diskette.

Ok, now that that factual stuff is out of the way, take a look at the screens. Each is different, although it is the same overall picture. I bought my Mac version from an ex-AOL employee and he told me that when they made this, all they did is paste a new screenshot onto the same old picture. He said it is extremely lame because the MAC screenshot was pasted onto a PC. duh! (ok not very funny, but I wasn't going for humor, I really just wanted to throw my hat in the ring for a free disk!)

Anyway, maybe sometime we can compare notes on this collecting / aol history thing. My collection has grown quite a bit since I last contacted you, although it is not nearly as extensive as Lydia's, Sparky's or Bustam's (cdcult). I predominately have disks but I also have a few mugs and such for good measure. Nothing like the truly "ancient" stuff in your site though. btw, you probably know this but i discovered that it is very easy to tell an "old" aol logo (circa pre-3.0) from a new one: follow the left edge of the triangle, and if it bisects the M in A M E R I C A then it's an oldie. The new one has the edge lining up with the M.

Have a good weekend.

Tom