It was much harder than it is today; there were no "one-click" buys on Robinhood or similar apps.
In early 2017, Dogecoin was worth roughly $0.0002 . By the end of the year, it spiked during the crypto bull run. how to buy dogecoin 2017
If you are trying to old coins from 2017, let me know: Do you have a wallet.dat file? Do you have a private key or recovery seed ? Which software did you use back then? It was much harder than it is today;