Several things coming into play here. One- it's a 25-06 which is hot right now so that drives anything up. Two- lefties have few options left for CRF actions and this is one. I myself really like the M77 MK II and have found it to be both reliable and accurate- I'd say others have as well. Three- Stainless/grey lam is coming back into fashion again. Personally I really like the combo. While I love traditional figured walnut and gloss blued rifles, I hate to actually hunt with them because I don't want to ruin the beauty. The stainless/laminate both looks good and holds up well to the hardships of hunting. Has to be a pretty significant scratch/ding to notice it on these and rusting is a minimal worry. People are realizing the benefits of that. All these are currently combining to drive the prices up, but I agree, it's too much. Got lucky and landed one locally for $650 a few months ago. Sent it in to Ruger for a refurb- they replaced the trigger with the new LC6, replaced all the action screws, gave me new rings because for some odd reason the ones that came on the gun shipped with blued hardware which had rusted, and did an amazing refinish job on the stock to bring the grey back out. It only cost me $100 and they had it back to me in 10 days. Pretty hard to beat that!
