My wife remembers buying $3 worth of Bitcoin in late 2009, but is fuzzy on the details of where she bought it and where the BTC are now, and thinks it's probably lost. She remembers buying it on a website. She doesn't recall having a BTC wallet. She forgot about it, because she didn't take it very seriously and thought it was a wasted 3 dollars, but she recently brought it up (and I was so surprised).
As far as I know, the first exchanges didn't open until 2010. So this is really a mystery to me - does anyone have any ideas? For example, were there some small websites selling Bitcoin that were not widely known? Any names? If I tell her a few candidate names she might remember. Help would be appreciated! Thanks!