I used to teach skeet shooting at USM. Our range was at a Hattiesburg PD shooting range. It was a beautiful place with a lake and also next to the river.
One day a cop had a dog out working with him. The dog was a huge German Shepherd. Really a beautiful dog. Also the dog was playing and having a good time, literally chasing butterflys.
The cop told me they had bought him out of Germany and he cost $7,000. That was maybe 27 years ago. They were so pleased with the dog that they had ordered another one. I actually didn’t know they got that big.
The dog caught a guy his very first night on the job.
GSDs from Europe were a bit bigger back then. They have “shrunk” the breed in the last 10 years or so, as they were getting bigger than the standard dictated. But, keep in mind that in Europe, the dogs that are not suitable for breeding and show (for one reason or another) are sold into police departments, and to foreign buyers. They keep the really good dogs until they are done breeding them, generally after they are 4 or 5 years old.
So, back then, any dog that was sold to a police department in the U.S. would have been a less valuable dog for breeding (i.e. with some sort of breed fault, such as size). It doesn’t mean in anyway that it wasn’t a good dog: it was just not a dog they wanted keep in-country for breeding and showing.
The GSD world in Germany and Europe in general is a very different world than what is here in the U.S.
And, as an aside, that price was a very cheap price for a trained, x-rayed, male GSD. For one we would have considered for our breeding program back then (an older, proven, titled male, essentially retired in Europe) a price of $15,000 and up would have been the norm. For a young, nice, titled breeding-quality male back then, the price started at $25,000 and then went up fast, if the dog was even for sale.