The best advise I got however was that if it was cheap enough to just buy it. $250 certainly was inexpensive to my untraineed eye so I bought it. Never have found out what its market value is.
More than you paid. That's what the market value is. How much more is a different question, but that doesn't matter right now.
Because you surely got yourself about the classiest turkey gun Pennsylvania's seen in many, many years. (Beats the hell out of using one of Mossberg's "Turkey Thug" (TM) model 500 variants. Less expensive than the Mossy, too.)