Bugger: When I was 7 or 8 years old (1954 - 1955) I distinctly remember my father and my uncles (his two brothers all three of whom were WW-II veterans) sitting around the kitchen table getting their $23.00 together to send off for a military surplus 1911 pistol!
The pistol eventually arrived and was in great shape - and I watched my dad and uncles shoot it into the huge Cedar stumps on our property in Puget Sound country.
That pistol would be worth about 60 (sixty!) times that amount today.
A few years later when I was 11 or 12 my neighborhood friends and I got our monies together and bought a surplus Lee-Enfield Jungle Carbine and some ammo - IIRC on that one we paid in the high thirty dollar range for it.
Thank goodness none of us were injured nor that we injured anyone else!
Yeah those days are long gone - in so many ways.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy
