Your first CD(s)

I resisted the whole CD thing for a while because I was afraid if I started I wouldn't want
to listen to my vinyl anymore. I actually won a my first CD player in a drawing we had at an office Christmas party.  A friend of mine got me a gift certificate & I purchased two CD with it. Peter Gabriel & Renaissance  (both "best of" CD's)  That started the slow painful process of rebuilding my music collection in digital.

I kept putting off moving from vinyl to CD as long as possible because of the cost of replacing my large and scratched up vinyl collection, the poor availability of prog albums, and the possibility that the CD format wouldn't catch on.  Plus, there were more than a few audiophile type articles that stated CD's would only last a few years before they degraded into unplayable frisbees so it was still a real risk.

Finally the tipping point for me came in 1988 with the "20 Years of Jethro Tull" box set and the Jimi Hendrix "Live at Winterland 1968" releases.  The Tull box came in 2 versions, vinyl (5 LP's) or CD (3 CD's) and the Hendrix album was a CD only release that I wanted really bad.  Since I had to go CD to get the Hendrix album, I figured I might as well get the Tull box on CD at the same time as well...good reasons to take the plunge.  The next CD I bought was Tales From Topographic Oceans.  I was super excited that I now had a recording of Tales that would never degrade with scratches and pops!  Prog availability was still a huge problem though.  The 1st 4 VDGG albums were not even released on import yet!  All they had were these 2 silly compilation CD's called VDGG Vol 1 and Vol 2 or something with selected tracks from The Least, H to He, and Pawn Hearts.  I don't even think all the '69 - '74 Crimson studio albums were released yet either...and if they were, they were terrible sound quality care of the bane of Robert Fripp's existence...EG Records

I signed up for a couple of those music clubs ("Get 10 CD's for a penny if you buy 1 a month for the next year!") and started whittling away at replacing my vinyl.  Luckily as time went on prog classics started showing up...most as $25 Japanese imports at first (which I'm sure is what I paid for Pawn Hearts), but later the price dropped as US and UK record labels got on board and started releasing back catalogs of 70's prog.  As the 90's began, the more obscure prog "1 album wonders" like Netherworld, Pentwater, Mirthrandir, Yezda Urfa, Babylon, Dragonfly, Lift etc began seeing the light of day (along with prog bands with super expensive long out of print vinyl like Greenslade) and buying CD's became more about exploring prog classics I never knew about versus replacing vinyl

Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

and ProgQuébec.

Gong-Flying Teapot
The Soft Machine Volume One And Two
Bananamour-Kevin Ayers

For definite. Can't remember much of the early 90's and I was still into vinyl and tapes back then.

First CD I bought was Beatles Past Masters 2 for comparison reasons. Maybe for Pioneer player. I don't recall the brand.