You did very well in my opinion and I wouldn't have walked away for that price. I too wish I had picked up and held on to some of these trainers. I was lucky enough to pick up a very nice Walther single shot a while back.

 

We used to have a sort of gun exchange group on Facebook a few years ago, and I got one of those. It was all legal FFL to FFL (most members were 03 holders, went to dealers for ones who weren't). Mine fell out of the C&R range, and had to transfer through a dealer. We kept up the group for a while after Facebook started cracking down on firearm owners. Its a fun rifle to shoot--very addictive to single load and shoot empty 12guage casings at 25yards

 

I never remember seeing these rifles commonly in the past at all. Through the years I never missed any gun shows near me. I in fact have not seen many in the past 20 years. The two nice ones I did see at gun shops I bought both. I paid like $120 each and they are like new.

 

I picked up a pair of these many moons ago and can’t be happier with accuracy. While express sights work flawlessly, I actually scoped both of mine. Bought original cleaning rods and slings for these too . Only annoying issue- repro “TAIWAN” mags are so freaking finicky and take a while tinkering with lips to feed properly…. Original magazine work like a charm, however - never an issue.

 

When I bought mine years ago I was going to scope both. I never did as was told on a few sites its difficult. Evidently they have an odd size grooved rail or base on the rifles. Heard they will not grab and hold properly and other stuff. I may try and do mine.

 

Back when my C&R was shiny new some one of the importers offered up a deal on these, five rifles for less than $200.
Problem was that no mags were included, no problem sez me, in my ignorance.
Think I spent more for the aftermarket mags than I did for the guns.
No matter, my son and I spent weeks cleaning, deburring and polishing them up and then more weeks range testing.
All were solid reliable shooters if fed SV ammo, HV not so much although I have read that some are OK with it.
The least attractive of the lot went off to become a customized "project" gun that was tweaked and tuned, scoped and stocked for my sons school project.
He was getting his degree in machining at the time.
Alas, he later lost it in a divorce so it is floating around out there some where.
The other four remain in my safe, seeing the occasional range trip.
The reason, IMO, that they do not appear on the used market often is that they do not have any "value" as used guns, at least from a dealers prospective.
From what I see here the retail value has grown but not enough to cause me to get them out to sell.
Maybe someday.....