They've been around in limited numbers since at least 2012. Back then the alternatives were shady exchanges like Mt. Gox, bitinstant, and physical meetups for trade. Wild times. Coinbase was just starting up and it was super shitty; it was even worse than it is now if you can believe that.
Edit: At the time, the vending machine exchanges had insane transaction fees for what you got: Convenience and a guarantee. I'd bet their fees are still astronomical.
I paid about 10% fee when I bought a few hundred in BTC years ago. I didn't have to sign up and give my bank account etc. I don't regret it.
Yeah... In 2010, I had a wallet on a HDD that died. No backups, not even of the recovery passphrase. It had a nice round 1,000BTC on it. Tossed the HDD before I even realized what I had done. Didn't think it would ever even take off like it did, either.
If I'd known, I'd gladly have paid a fortune to recover that drive. Still makes me incredibly sick to think about. I'd bought hundreds of more coins since then, but mostly before it really took off, and to be completely truthful: I spent most of it on drugs.
I never got on with Bitcoin much despite reading about it around 2013. I figure I probably would have sold in one of the early spikes anyway, or lost it to Mt Gox. In 2010 when you had those 1000 BTC, how much would they have cost when you lost the HDD? Probably not much. So you could have bought more then cheaply, if you'd known.
Mine was in a Yahoo address that I lost access to after my roommate allowed some guy to sleep in his extra room for his daughter when she visited and he brought home 2 crackheads who stole both my laptops.
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