It was sometime in 2013 and the price was around $11/btc. I just heard about it on some libertarian/anarchist page and was immediately sold on the idea so I decided to buy 10. I think MtGox was the only real exchange, but I didn't want to give up any KYC, so I had to wire some money to some random person on the internet and wait 2 hours to see if it actually showed up.