I bought four surplus rifles at Big 5. The trick is to check every week or so to see what they have, and ask to see what they have in the back room as well as on the shelf. Once you start checking regularly, you can just ask if they got anything new that week (often they just get two or three rifles a week - sometimes none). Here in California at least, we have to pay a $15 DROS fee for each long gun purchase - that means one fee whether we buy 1 or 10 rifles at a time. So as I found good rifles, I put them on layaway until I had the four I wanted. Since the sales recur regularly, I wound up getting them all for the lowest price (save the ads to show that they were marked down since you put them on layaway). So I wound up with a like-new Yugo M48 with all accessories, a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 (octagon receiver, nice shape), an excellent M44, and a decent Turkish Mauser. I looked at a lot of pretty beat up junk between the nice ones, but if you are patient, they do get some nice guns. It took me around 4 months to accumulate the four rifles I wanted and buy them all at once. Obviously this isn't the way to go if you are in a hurry (I already had examples of all these rifles except the 91/30, so I wasn't especially anxious). But it was kind of fun to stop by every week or two and see if any "gems" had come in.
Doug