My first fantasy read was The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (in German, as I'm from Germany )
It has a very special place in my heart. I had seen the movie and liked it. Nothing special, until quite a while later. (I'm not sure how many months/heart or how long it's been since then...)
My cousin was to stay the night and had a book with her: The Neverending Story. An old edition with the two-coloured print and the beautiful illustration at the beginning of every chapter. I borrowed it from her, read it, loved it. And wanted a copy of my own. But it was impossible to get the same edition as it was out of print. And all the other editions didn't have the illustrations or two-colour-print.
Fast-forward a few years, I stood in the bookstore and was on my way out, not having found anything - until there it was. The Neverending Story. Just a paperback edition, but with the same cover as the old hardcover my cousin had. I picked it up, looked, and there it was: two-colour-print, illustrations, everything I wanted. So I bought it. And all since then it's a treasure to me. Not only being the first Fantasy novel I read, but finally getting it after a kind of nevernending story of it's own