A recent subscriber, I've only been reading dragon since #310. Loving it, I have since bought several backissues, though they were all in the $6 range (#286 and more recent). Though the main reason was economical, there was one other: I have no idea of the content in the earlier magazines. Aside from the rather low-quality (at least as far as reading the words goes) pictures of the covers, I have no clue what's in them, as there are no descriptions presented. This is unfortunate, as I'm sure many were excellent issues. I really do not believe it would be much work to add descriptions to the issues, and if it would give backissue-buyers the ability to buy the older issues then why not?
Additionally, I would request a slight elaboration on the "one line per article descriptions of those beyond #286, which make them rather hard to judge. Of course, that is a much more minor issue.
We agree. Naturally, it is in our best interest to provide good descriptions of all the products we sell and the process of adding more descriptions is an ongoing endeavor.
Of course, it's a question of manpower and priorities like anything else.
In the meantime, you can get excellent details on past issues from the super cool DragonDex at this address:
http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/
Also, try www.acaeum.com for anything & everything D&D (1E)with descriptions.