Gentlemen, each of you has my sincere thanks for contributing your thoughts here. I truly do appreciate the input from all of you.
Those of you who pointed out that I should have questioned the price marked on the kit are absolutely correct. The old clichés about assumptions definitely come into play here. This shop has offered consigned kits since just before Desert Shield. If a local hobbyist comes into financial difficulty or if one should pass away and the family needs help disposing of their collections, this shop has always tried to help as best they can in each circumstance. The U-boat kit was in a beat up box, so I just assumed that it was simply another lost nomadic kit in search of a builder. I guess that I have been in the hobby long enough to realize that Revell of Germany seldom shrink-wraps their offerings, but it never really occurred to me at the time that this may have been a new kit.
Anyhow, I took some time from work and studies this afternoon to finally get this situation off my conscience. I stopped by the store and the owner greeted me at the door with another apology. She called me "Timmy" the entire time, but I did not feel the need to correct her. We visited for nearly an hour and she explained her side of the story. The shop is, in fact, experiencing some very great financial difficulties and the owner has had to take out a reverse mortgage on her property holdings to meet the payroll and taxes. A recent visit to the doctor has revealed that she has some very serious medical conditions. She is well past retirement age, but she cannot afford to close shop at this point. Her tears told me the rest of the story. At the risk of betraying my reputation and exposing the gushy nonsense under my exterior, I may have had to fight back a tear myself, but please don't tell my wife or kids...I've raised them to be Spartans and anything to the contrary compromises the integrity of my leadership. Not a word!
The conversation eventually turned back to the kit. As I had guessed, it was a consigned kit, but she offered to let me take a look at the contents. First impressions were not favorable. The majority of the smaller parts had been clipped off the sprues and gathered into a zip-lock bag tucked into one of the hull halves; the fine railings for the wintergarten were broken beyond any reasonable hope of repair; and it appears that there may be a piece or two absent altogether. Underneath a pile of instruction sheets and pages torn from magazines which featured articles about this kit was a couple of real surprises - a WEM set of etch (beat up pretty hard, but workable) and a Nautilus wooden deck (many of the pieces loose and floating around the bottom of the box). While it was a mess, it was pretty apparent that someone had very big plans for this boat once upon a time.
In the end, I argued that the contents of the box were worth quite a bit more than the $125 she was asking and that I would be taking advantage of her if I did not give her a fair price for the lot. I made an offer well in excess of the asking price, but she countered with an unusual proposition. "Timmy," she said, "if you will forgive a foolish old woman and pray for her, you can just take the model. Bring it in when you are done with it so I can see how it turned out." So, we hugged it out and I took a knee to offer up a little prayer with her. She handed me the kit, gave me her blessing, and excused herself to go into the back to make herself presentable again. I took the opportunity to pay for the kit and left the clerk with instructions that the "change" was to be given directly to the owner, along with my thanks for her graciousness.
So, I guess that I now have a project for the winter...