most shops here don't carry milsurps, but from what I've seen, non of the sporting goods stores have had mosins for over a year except big 5, they always have a sale going on but they never have them in stock, they have little claim cards you fill out and when they get them in they call you down the list in order that people picked up claim cards and charge them whatever sale price they had when you got the card. the only mosin I've seen on a shelf has been a crappy type 53 U-Fix-em that the moron shop owner wants $200 for... it's been on his shelf for over a year and a half, I notice it's always in a different spot and he's tried a number of different ways of staging it(bolt open/closed, bayonet flipped back/forward, ETC), nobody is interested. the only other shop in town that I know of that carries milsurps just has SKS and mausers from time to time, no mosin nagants. I notice when stores stopped getting in pallets of x54R spam can ammo is about when they stopped having mosin's in stock. I doubt it's so much an issue with supply dwindling as it was with demand dwindling.
they only made 15 million of the buggers with guys buying them by the crate, supply is bound to dry up some time.