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When I bought my '67 T337B, it had one run-out engine and another at about 500 hours. It is deiced and had been well maintained, with King digital radios (155's). So it was in pretty good shape except for the out of TBO engine. The paint and interior were average+, and I paid $41,000 for it 7 years ago. It cost me $13K to overhaul the engine (wrote it right into the loan from the start), and spent another $2000 on little things (there seem to always be some "surprises" even if a plane has been reasonably maintained).
It costs more these days to get an overhaul, but I agree that the reman price, though a good correct number, is costly if you want to find a good overhaul shop. But that doesn't take into account the VAR cranks, which might make remans the better choice. I got lucky because even though my engine needed the VAR crank, the O/H shop found one for $2000 (that was included in the $13K overhaul cost).
I don't think I'd be willing to pay more than $40K max, and then probably very squeamishly. Even if you want to argue with Kevin's numbers, it's hard to argue with his logic that you can look around and find a good one that doesn't have runout engines for the kind of money you're going to unavoidably spend during the same time period, so why take the risk? I think sometimes sellers over-value their aircraft, hoping to find someone willing to take the plunge. Unfortunately they too often do so.
FWIW...
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