Very early 90s I was hunting music by a then obscure New York jazz player. Visiting NY, I tried possible record shops but could only get the one recording I already had. I couldn't find his details from the phone book.
Back home in suburban Auckland, I posted a message on a rec.music group (the main amusement of the net then were newsgroups) asking if anyone had heard of the player. I think it was my first ever net posting. Ten minutes later there was a reply from a New York woman called Patrice who had a list of the obscure Japanese cassettes he had issued with addresses how i could track them down in japan.
We emailed , she did not know anything of New Zealand and couldn't understand how i could have heard of him. She tried to send me a document with all the details but in those days the net connection was fraught, kept crashing, cost I think about $10 an hour and ended up costing me about $150 before I could retrieve it! It later turned out she knew him and gave me his postal address (he wasn't online), and we exchanged postcards!
All that wandering around New York looking for his music and yet 10 minutes back home I got all the info I needed -and made contact with him . I knew then there was something very special about this new medium!