While updating all the fanfic metadata for Calibre, I came across a few authors that removed every single one of their fics.
Although it's probably not likely (it requires nobody else to have saved it and the author to have deleted their own copy), there's an odd feeling in wondering if you might have the last existing copy of a fanfic in the world.
(It might be somewhat more likely for one of
@Valka D'Ur's hard-copy fics though.)
It is true that I likely have the last existing copy of some fanfics, but most are probably ones that I either wrote myself or co-wrote. Back in the late '80s/early '90s I collaborated with some other people to write some Star Trek fanfic and a small book of filksongs. I strongly suspect I'm probably the only person in this group who kept any copies. I may even be the only person who still has a copy of the song I participated in writing at BanffCon, where we held a filking workshop. A group of about half a dozen of us got together and wrote an "X-Files" filksong, to the tune of "Help!". It was an interesting challenge for me, since I'd never seen either the TV show or heard that particular Beatles song. But I did keep a copy of the song we ended up with (my contribution was about half a line).
The rarest items among my fanzine collection that I didn't write/co-write are probably the Darkover 'zines. There weren't many printed in the first place (I have one of only 200 hardcover copies of the
Darkover Concordance ever printed), and there are a couple of reasons why some copies people had were discarded or outright destroyed (various legal issues resulted in the MZB Literary Trust ordering people to destroy any Darkover fanfic they possessed, and some people doing this voluntarily for a different legal reason). Obviously I am not going to allow either some team of American lawyers to dictate the contents of my bookshelf, nor will I give in to peer pressure and throw my fanzines, novels, and anthologies on a bonfire. So I've kept my copies.
There are some Star Trek 'zines that didn't have a large circulation, and I suspect some of those may have been victims of the raid on a convention dealers' room in the '70s when Paramount lawyers swooped in, grabbed every fanzine they could find, and left. Some of those were likely the only copies in existence, which from the pov of both a book collector and SF historian, is a loss to Star Trek fandom that can't ever be restored.
*Some will probably scoff that fanfic based on a TV show could ever be a loss to the literary world, but consider that people put in time and effort to create the stories, poetry, songs, and artwork that went into those. You never know when a story will touch people or influence them to look at the world in a more positive way.
Some specific issues are hard to find. I'm missing a few from certain titles, and it's not from lack of hunting for them. Some just didn't have that many copies, or there may be some reason why they're in the hands of collectors, rather than in circulation and available for sale.
Obviously, fanfic can't legally be sold, but these are being sold as collectibles, not as a specific author trying to make money off an intellectual property they don't own. What the Paramount lawyers didn't know - or care about - was that Gene Roddenberry actually didn't mind people creating their own Star Trek stories. As with George Lucas, who also tolerated fanfic, fan creations kept people thinking about the franchise, kept them interested, every person who sported a costume at a convention was literally a walking advertisement, and so on.