I got my 1950's Webley Junior from Mr Marvin -
http://airgunoldies.com/ - who is easy to deal with and honest, with a great reputation. The pistol was a bargain at $125, but with that price needed to come apart for some cleaning and a new mainspring and seal on the piston and at the breech. I expected that. For a Junior in good cosmetic shape and shooting well I'd expect double that price. Mine has lots of gentle wear. Here's that one with my similar vintage Senior.
And these are clips taken from the 300 frame per second video I shot of the Junior and the Tempest, showing the moment the trigger is pulled and the flash of the pellets after the guns have jumped forward and down.
I agree, the HW70 review seems incomplete. I've seen that in a few of his reviews, seems something of a theme, as though he doesn't want to commit. But at least he provides a lot of good information. Very helpful guy when I emailed him once about an obscure pistol in need of repair.
If accuracy is a priority there isn't a lot for $300 or less, in terms of self-sufficient airguns anyway. Doubt you'd be able to find a Feinwerkbau at that price. More like $600 and up in usable condition, and often needing a replacement seal kit as many of the earlier seals are breaking down into mush. Any match pistol from days gone buy is going to be great as a plinker, obviously, but they're still in fairly high demand among collectors and also some match shooters who miss the style of the old guys. The Pardini K58 for example, a brilliant single stroke pneumatic pistol. Not high powered, typically around 400fps with a 7gr .177" pellet, but dead accurate and easy to use, besides being good looking. The cheapest newly made match grade pistol you're likely to find would be the Daisy 747 Triumph. Match grade is being stretched a little here, as it's not really in the same league as the stuff used in formal competitions, but it is widely used in clubs as a starting pistol for junior shooters to use before they buy their first Hammerli or whatever. Pretty close to recoilless, heavy but fairly solidly built, and accurate to a degree the Webleys and the HW70 will never achieve. Also within your budget:
https://www.dlairgun.com/Air-Pistols/Daisy/017_747_Triumph.html
The barrels on the Crosmans can be pretty good. My brother's 1377 for example. Thing is almost match grade, can hit anything it aims at almost too easily. I was so amazed by it when he got the thing in 1989 that I made really nice wood furniture for it, as the plastic seems an insult to such a barrel. I've got it back again now to upgrade the piston, going to make a flat top and flatten the valve body face and do some other tweaks along with getting a steel breech for it. Any of the Crosmans can be pretty darn accurate, though the odd one gets a dud barrel. But then you're either pumping a bunch for every shot or stuffing CO2 into the thing often. Or going down the rabbit hole... converting to HPA. I probably put over 100 hours and $500 into my son's 2240 carbine. It's a great little shooter, but kind of a silly thing to do, putting a HiPAC, Lane regulator, plenum gauge, and Bug Buster 6x scope on a $100 gun, along with the endless custom tweaks.
If you don't mind pumping, a 1377 is probably the best value for a self-sufficient plinker with decent accuracy. Here's my little brother's, with some koa wood a friend brought back from Hawai'i as a gift earlier the same year. I scolded her for buying koa wood... but her defence was that it had been in use as a cutting board for years at a kiosk selling fresh fruit drinks, and she'd spent the better part of an hour convincing the vendor that it was such a beautiful piece of wood she just had to give it to her violinmaker friend in Vancouver. She was right, it was wasted as a cutting board. And I've gotten a few nice objects out of it, still have a couple of small pieces in my scrap bin for use some day in little carvings.
