purchase [1999]
I have little faith in numerology and the likes: numbers appear at random , and trying to assign meaning to them (or to dreams etc) seems like ... well ... pipe dreams.
Well, no, that said ... there might be a "plan" behind it all when it seems to be more than coincindence... you know ... when the phone rings and you were thinking about the caller just a minute ago.
I'm going with 1999 for several reasons. (1) Prince is gone, (2) 1999 is gone, but 9's are not. (3) 9 times out of ten your first choice is the right one, (4) September is month 9.
But 1999 is history. Back in 1999 I had a one-of-a-kind VCR and TV that could handle NTSC 3.54 - The pair cost me an arm and a leg. In the process I learned about NTSC, PAL, SECAM and more. You live overseas, you learn these things.
Back in the early 1990s, when the Internet was a text-based afterthought, I purchased an NTSC "portable" VCR from a friend visiting from the US. This meant tht I also had to purchase an NTSC compatible TV: US formatted media shows up as squiggles on the screen without it - about the same as regional DVDs. For a number of years, we would aquire US recorded media that couldnt be viewed otherwise. During that time, MTV came on line. We had hours -long recordings of US TV that included the "latest" MTV clips, all recorded at SLP mode (6 hours to a single tape) among which was Prince : 1999, and the entirety of Purple Rain.