When I and the world were young, my professional writing career got its start with a tiny piece in The Dragon, the D&D magazine from TSR Hobbies. This was my writeup of a humorous cursed magic item, The Rod of Singing, appearing in their Bazaar of the Bizarre column. They paid me money for it!
In the end, I sold them three magic items in 1980 and 1981, reproduced below. I went on to write many other articles and eventually a whole book, Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers’ Handbook (Reston Publishing, 1981, reprinted much later by me under my Norton Creek Press label).