Re: Looking at a boat...
Well as I am in Minnesota, I can concur that we tend to have high boat prices due to the overwhelming number of lakes and sheer demand for them. NADA is like a down payment schedule. Everyone has a beater boat in their back yard if they don't have a trailer queen in their garage. I fear you are in the back yard, beater realm of boats. I actually can't believe some of the junk I see at the ramps that still float from the 80's and 90's. I didn't quite catch if you are under budgetary contraints or are just looking to boat on the cheap. While I'd invite you to MN for some shopping, you will need to be willing to kiss a lot of toads to ever find a decent fiberglass boat in the prices you have mentioned so far. My best advice for someone who wants to go boating and not go fixing, is to get something at the oldest in the late 1990's. Your odds will logically improve that you will not be as disappointed as I can only imagine with a boat from the 1970's.
I still see an amazingly high number of late 1990's boats that people don't maintain as well there however. People tend to think maintainance on a boat can be deferred because they don't use it much which couldn't be further from the truth. Here ,nearly all of our boats are under 20 feet and so as opposed to moving up in size as you get more experienced or dissatisfied, folks tend to move up in brand and sell to the next person to learn how to boat on.
As to your question regarding the age of the pictures, recently I was considering a tow vehicle out of state on Ebay and the pictures of the truck, although had only 30,000 miles, were just too good to be true. After a bit of researching the owner finally admitted the pictures were from when it was brand new making the price too high but not negotiable. It's amazing the white lies and outright deceptions people will tell to sell something. Boats may be at the top of the list of things people will lie about.
