[vancelot69]

Oh, something else I thought of. When I bought mine, I had some cash burning a hole in my pocket, and I was afraid that vehicles I was interested in, others were also interested in and it would get sold out from under me if I lollygagged around. So I pulled the trigger on the one I bought probably quicker than I should have, but like you, I never felt I got robbed until later on. I started noticing a lot of decent 1st gens and square bodies around the $5k range, even closer to where I live (i.e. not in the rust belt) on FB and craigslist, and I started saying to myself that I should have waited. I'm sitting on some cash now and am afraid to pull the trigger prematurely again heh..

Here are some of the pics I put on my ad trying to be as up front as possible, and someone still paid $2500 for it, but he was more equipped to de-rustify it than I am. So it also depends on your skill level, the skill level of your friends (i.e. if you have a friend who can do body work), and what your pain threshold is, how much is the cutoff point, how much can you spend getting on it after purchase before saying "too much". For me, I'm not a body guy, but I'm pretty mechanically capable, so I couldn't justify spending the money I would have had to on the mechanicals when I wouldn't be able to do anything about the rust cheaply. If the truck was relatively rust-free, I would have been more than happy to fix the mechanical issues it had.