Mosins are great. The 91/30's (long barrels) are the more accurate, but the M44's are the loudest. You can feel a concussion wave come off the things if you're anywhere to the sides of the shooter.
There are a few things to look for on a Mosin.
First, the state of the rifling. Take a bore-light, or a flashlight, and check to see how deep the rifling is. It's possible to get one that's completely shot out. Century ususally makes an effort to prevent this, but it still happens.
Second, the frosting inside the barrel. These rifles were used with corrosive ammo, and if they weren't cleaned properly, there can be heavy pitting and frosting in the lands. If you have the option of searching through a few, check them all and take the best looking one.
Third, the reciever. I picked up one for $59 that had little pitting, strong rifling, but the reciever looks like it was blued by a 2 year old. So long as it's functionally sound, a good shooter can look like crap and be okay for me. Some people are into collecting them, so they obviously want the best, but you're not going to get one for under a hundred without some luck.
Matching numbers. I try to find one with matching numbers, if not on all of the parts, then on most. As massed produced as these things were, there's plenty of parts that'll fit every gun, but sometimes you run into an issue with mismatched parts not fitting perfectly together. Realize these guns were produced up through WWII, and sometimes with "Ze Germans" pounding on the front gate. Time was of the essence, and in mass production, rushing a product means inconsistancy between lots. So long as the bolt and reciever have matching numbers, you'll be okay. All matching numbers are nice to have, but hard to find, as a lot of these things came out of storage in bad or worse state.
