$2.00 for a working firearm is a pretty good buy. My best gun buy was even cheaper, and purely accidental.
Some years back, my wife bought a baby grand piano from the estate of a co-worker's mother. I was going to enlist a few buddies to help me move it, but I decided to hire a moving company to bring it home. Good decision, because the pros have all the equipment to make it almost effortless. That weekend, they were having an auction to sell off the other contents of the house. So she wanted us to go to the auction so she could make sure her piano wasn't damaged by the auction crowd. I had wanted to go hunting that day, but since the weather was going to be very warm, I reluctantly decided to go to the auction.
I registered to bid, and bought some gardening tools, etc. Near the end of the sale, I paid for my purchases and took my tools to my truck. When I got back, my wife told me she bought one more item. I asked her what she bought, and she said while I was gone, they auctioned off all of the items on the back wall of the garage, and the contents of the workbench. Nobody else bid, so she bought it all for $1.00. I was kind of annoyed, because I hadn't seen anything there I really wanted. I paid the dollar, and decided to look through the junk to see if there was anything useful. I boxed up about 40-50 lbs. of nails, screws, nuts, bolts, hardware, and several hand tools. Not bad, so far. Then I looked under the workbench and grabbed what at first felt like a length of pipe wrapped in an old bath towel.
The "pipe" was actually the barrel of a Stevens Crackshot .25 rimfire rifle. The gun was in very nice condition overall. All of the metal was coated with grease, so no rust. Most of these old single shots have pitted barrels from neglect and old corrosive ammo. But the bore also had a heavy coating of grease, so it was in perfect condition. I had thought about just walking away and leaving it all behind. I'm glad I didn't.
