- Readmore book store, Prestonsburg: I think I remember seeing V:tM here with its iconic cover (green marble, artificial rose, ankh necklace) well before I got interested in the WoD. However, I do know I saw some of the novels there. I even looked through one M:tAs book. I really wasn't interested in the fiction, although I would later pick up a few novels, but this one gave hints about the game world that I hadn't explored before. Unfortunately, it was the last book in a trilogy, so that made me wary of buying it. By the time I thought I would get it, the book was no longer there. I think it is still available as a PDF, along with the rest of the trilogy, but I am not really that interested in getting it anymore. Readmore closed early this year. [I don't remember seeing any WoD material at the Pikeville/Coal Run location.]
- Waldenbooks, Huntington Mall: Considering how fortunate I would be at the Lexington location, I was surprised how little the selection was here. I mostly saw books I already had or weren't too interested in. When the store went out of business, in 98 or 99, I almost got a W:tO book that I finally decided to pick up. They had had it for a while, but I had wanted to wait until I got other books in the line first. My mom convinced me that wait would be too long and that I should just check out Borders instead. I believe that I may have picked up a supplement that day, but I still regret not picking up a major supplement that I had the opportunity to pick up. Sure, I would have lost it in the 2003 flood, but I still would have had it.
- Hobbytown USA, Regency Center, Lexington: When I was looking for books, I did internet searches at the library. There were about four collectables/hobby stores in Lexington that were listed. This one was the easiest one to get to, as it was along the normal road we still take for most shopping trips. (There is still a Micheal's and Krogers there.) The internet search was correct; they did have many books. Most of them were for W:tO and C:tD though, and not really anything that I wanted. Older stuff. I mean, some of the C:tD stuff wasn't even being used any more for second edition playing. There was this one W:tO book that I couldn't gotten, but I had seen some bad reviews for it, so I passed. The strange thing is the C:tD books would be very valuable now, and they would have been safe from the flood with the part of my collection that was just out of the water. The location would close soon after and merge with the city's other site. I haven't been keeping up with my Lexington searches lately, as the odds of me moving there have gotten very slim, so I don't know if the other site is still open.
- Cavalier Comics, Pound/Norton VA: In my searches, I discovered this comic shop right across the border in Virginia. I printed a map for the directions and convinced my mom that we should go there for the first time in years, just so I could stop there and check this place out. We stopped there on the way back from the shopping center complexes in Norton. It was slightly easier to get to on the return trip. The store turned out to be slightly smaller than Page 3 was, at the time. There TTRPG section in the back room was sparse. Only two WoD products, and I had them both. I didn't stop there again, at least the relatively few times in went back to Virginia. Flash forward to the mid-2010s. I had started going back to Norton a few times a year. I had noticed that Cavalier had moved/opened a second location at the shopping centers. I strongly believe it was the former, as they had a small selection of CoD books, which had stopped being published for physical stores a few years previously. They even had one of the last WoD books, which had come out over ten years before by then. There wasn't anything I particularly was looking for, and I felt awkward to ask if they had anything else not currently on display. I was just too close to Page 3 to ask. I stopped in to the new location (about the size of Page 3's second site) a few times before I stopped the Norton trips in 2019, partially due to the pandemic. Also, the shopping centers just didn't have the same feel any more after a few too many stores went out. I still think they are open though.
This has been my game world.