Owl & Weasel Wednesday #1 February 1975

"Issue no. 1; preserve this copy carefully! Who knows, the very piece of paper you know hold between your fingers may become a rarity, its value soaring to 1 3/4 times its present cost!"

So that would put it at 17.5 p now?  Could not find a listing on eBay but I figure it must worth more than that.

This of course is the premier issue of Owl & Weasel, the precursor to White Dwarf.  Published February 1975 this actually makes it older than The Strategic Review (the precursor to The Dragon) by a couple of months.

The newsletter is dedicated to 'progressive games'.  But also mentioned are abstract games, psychological games and even computer games.  An interesting description of what would become our hobby.

In these four pages we have a review of "Killer" and a Monopoly variant "Dipoploly".  There is a discussion between editors Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson on wargamming.
But mostly it is a call for more content.

I missed the 'zine era by a few years.  Sure when I got to college there were still some local publications that were zine format, mostly sci-fi/fantasy ones, but they were rare even then.
While the feel is the same a say a blog post or web zine of today, the attention seems different.   I can put anything I like up with zero cost.  Sometimes it is good, sometimes...well you get you paid for.   Here, at 10p an issue I expect that more care and attention was put into the publication.  After all the editors only had 4 pages to work with and wanted to be sure their best material went in.

I am looking forward to see how this Zine and the Hobby develop over the next 25 issues.