$150?...on sale? ...seems like a lot to me...they were $25. at Lever Arms in Vancouver not that long ago....around 1985, I think. But they still weren't selling...instead everybody was handpicking and buying up the Swedish Mausers at $45 (CG) and $50 (Husq.) All plus tax.
A $25 Mosin, even 35 years ago was usually a rifle with a poor bore.
When the Soviets and satellite countries first started dumping their Mosin variants on the market, they dumped the Fair/Poor/Good grade first. There were a few jewels, if you had the ability to sort through a lot of them.
I remember the first ones offered by S.I.R. and International.
Some looked unissued on the outside but the bores were badly pitted.
SIR had the first dibs on the Mosins that came into Canada, through International Firearms out of Montreal.
Mr Lever asked me to go and pick out a couple of hundred for his Vancouver store in 1980. What I found was not nice. Mr Lever passed on the first couple of lots.
They actually came into Canada first, then were shipped off to the US to Century, after passing inspections. Century distributed them all across the US.
China and Viet Nam had massive inventories of Mosins, so did Korea and a few African nations. All were upgrading to AKs. SKS weren't sold but mostly lend lease to nations/revolutionists requesting free arms.
35 years ago is longer than many on this site have been alive. That is a long time in the stream of today's time frames.