Here, too, and my Tula only set me back $99 (with all the trimmings), less transfer fees. They were going as cheap as $69 back then, if you weren’t looking for a hand-select and didn’t mind mismatched serials. Love to add an SKS and (If I could find one in the same shape without the price in deep space - good luck on that, eh?) a good, solid, German-made Mauser.
I dunno, found my chinese sks in great shape, with sling for $300. And that was only 2 years ago. They’re out there. JG sales is selling surplus sks’s intermittently for that, but those are PRC army surplus and are rode hard and put away wet. Keep an eye out.
CC