I was 28 when I bought my first laser, period - a 1mw red cat toy. At that time, they were going for about $50! (at least that was the cheapest one I could find at the time) That was in the spring of 1998. I probably could have acquired one sooner, but I took a job in the fall of 97' working in a machine shop where they used multi-kilowatt lasers to cut and drill things. Before that I didn't know diddly about lasers.
My first high-powered laser was a WL Nexus putting out (supposedly, at the time I didn't know about other laser sellers and WL's generally bad rep) 95mw. That was in 2006, I think. Had a "dry spell" with my laser fixation in between the $50 cat toy and the WL laser.