So far as passing up a good, free Victa 2 stroke (it was a late pre-China one as far as I could tell) goes, why would I take home something I disliked just because it was free? Usually fresh piles of doggie-do are free also.
As far as the broader question of acquiring interesting mowers is concerned, it isn't a question of age, Mark - I like classic mowers too - but in the end you have to get them up to scratch, and that costs money as well as time. Example: you'll have to get a catcher for your HRU195, and those are in moderately short supply (contractors seem to trash them, from beating them against things to clean them out, and from them falling off the top of the trailer at speed), therefore expensive. I needed a replacement idle jet for my 1980s HR194: $18, for a tiny bit of moulded plastic. A 30 year old hessian-bag Honda catcher: $50. And so it goes, a whole bunch of small expenditures, until you finally have it in decent shape. At that point it's worth a couple of hundred dollars, but it's cost you that much. Of course you wouldn't do it unless you planned to keep the mower and enjoy it, but how many mowers can you enjoy? I've tried one mower, and I've tried two mowers. One is better (just ask my wife). So, I'll get rid of either my classic early HR194, or my 2009 HRU195, sooner or later. It will be painful, whichever one goes, but one of life's hardest lessons is that it takes constant work to keep from accumulating too much stuff.
