i was feeling nostalgic for comand & conquer 1 after watching the recent lore video but i noticed that no one had the first two in either comand and conquer or red alert steam has both series from 3 onward so what happened to them

They were free for a while, or was the 2nd C&C?

The original C&C, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun plus all expansions were released for free for a while. There are still mirrors up for them if you search. Now though they are only sold through Origin I think.

There are also all those decade/collection/best of DVDs on Amazon. I got a box set four or five years ago, that was great.

And Red Alert 2 too.

Edit: Never mind, I'm mistaken.

Here's the archive of the original announcement: Click Me.

The download links still seem to work.

try the origin store, the complete collection from c&c 1 up to the latest including renegade needed my origin account to get them

For your own good - Buy all up to C&C 3, do not buy or play #4.

Lol, currently playing the series again after I grabbed it recently from Origin. The Ultimate Collection on Origin contains (as others have already stated) the whole series to date (excluding Sole Survivor or whatever that one's title was). And I think it's the only place where you can actually grab the whole collection, from what I've heard the boxed edition only contains an Origin key (+ a soundtrack CD or something).

Edit: Well, one alternative is grabbing a physical copy of The First Decade, a used copy should come pretty cheap by now. I grabbed The Ultimate Collection, though, because I was tired of installing from disc (and was hoping that I'd not have to manually apply any fixes anymore that TFD still required - I was wrong).

C&C 3 was a little on the pricy side last time I checked.

EDIT!
WHOA!
In the past year they took a significant price drop! PARTY!

I just paid ten bucks for the whole collection during Origin's Autumn Sale. :P

I just bought the complete collection on Amazon for $7.00.
Granted I'm going to need to run it kind of low on my PC but screw it, it's a great game.

I hate you. Actually I love you but... I hate you. For this one thing.

Give me time, I'm sure I can give you plenty of other good reasons to hate me.

FYI by complete collection I mean C&C 3, not the entire C&C catalogue.