The 1980s will be remembered for big hair, shoulder pads and the biggest destruction of wealth investors had ever seen. It's 30 years since the 1987 share market crash but the legacy of Black Monday still lingers.

Welcome to 1987, where businessmen are Rock Stars, investing is the new black - and a crash in the share market is about to change everything.

"People weren't thinking rationally" - Brian Gaynor.

A conversation at a dinner party nowadays is likely to turn, at some point, to house prices. Who's made lots of money, what's happening to prices and who can't afford one.

In the 1980s, you can substitute out 'property' and replace it with 'the share market'. That's not a topic that has ever been dinner party fodder for my generation; it's generally left to finance professionals and the already-wealthy. But 30 years ago, it was a different story.

The newspaper headlines were dominated by stories of share market wins instead of phenomenal house price gains. Share clubs, where everyday people got together to pool their money and invest in the stock market, were a dime a dozen. Mercedes Benz were flying off the lot and Moet champagne was in hot demand. The share market one year went up 99 percent, another year it was up 116 percent. Market mania took hold.

John Douglas was in his late 30s back then; a school teacher, father of 5, and a small-time investor with his share club. He remembers lots of talk about how much money people were making on the market.

There was quite a lot of hype around it. - John Douglas.

"I remember some people going off for lavish weekends because their share club was doing particularly well, so they'd spend the weekend doing some sort of exotic thing, or so it seemed to us anyway".

Veteran business analyst Brian Gaynor was a stockbroker in the '80s and says everyone wanted a piece of the action, from taxi drivers, to customs officers, pilots, even schoolboys.

"There were one or two schoolboys who used to ring up from the schoolyard in Wellington College wanting to know what had happened in the share market, wanting to know if they should be selling shares or what they should be buying"

These days, companies' annual meetings are typically populated by retirees, there for the tea and biscuits and a bit of a question and answer session after the presentation. Brian Gaynor says that couldn't be further from a typical meeting in the 1980s, when businessmen were almost on par with rock stars.

"For example, Brierley Investments had over 200,000 shareholders and at the annual meeting there'd be 1500 people there. The meeting started at 3pm..…

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