There's plenty of people with the 'just as good' attitude about buying a Turkshit O/U off poormetto for $600, but they need not the fudds. You see, fudds are the biggest cheapasses around and love them some poor people shit like Springfield XDs and Kel-Tec P17s, but they won't touch Turkshit O/Us.

There's a reason it spooks them, and it's mostly proprietary chokes that you may never find replacements for and are the last thing the shot touches, making them the most critical for patterning. Firing pins can protrude from the action when open, resulting in the barrels guillotining it and shutting you down for not just the day, but until you can figure out how those Khyber Pass MFs used a goat-powered grinder to stuff a MIM firing pin in there. Over time, the pot metal action will deform due to lack of support (because that requires precision) and not lock up strongly, rapidly getting worse like a UAE Tesla battery, and no one will fix it.

From searching the archives of fudds past, it seems the ongoing consensus is the absolute bare-assed minimum of quality for a shotgun that will go 50,000 shells before needing action work, having good and reliable chokes, and not being a prime candidate for the hacksaw Olympics is a Beretta 686 Silver Pigeon. Amidst their grumbling, the Browning Citori was identified as the lowest these fudds would "slum it", with a few individuals taking a beating for declaring their love for the CZ Turkshit O/Us.

In short, there is an acknowledgement that raiding a fudd estate sale and making off with a Citori would be the cheapest way to get an "acceptable" starter clay gun. I found that the people selling them were actively engaged in the consumption of illicit substances previously distributed by the CIA into predominantly minority neighborhoods and it was within $100 to just buy a NIB Citori with synthetic furniture. This was not only a monetary savings, but it angers the fudds to see something that isn't wood on a sporting gun, and I ain't got the time to baby wood furniture, so why would I pay >$300 more for that shit?