One thing which seems to be missing from this discussion is any mention of how much you have to spend, what you will do with it between purchase and ready to fly, and how long you are willing to wait between those two events.
If you have patience and a place to store it, you can save a lot of money. If you have a lot of money, you can get it back in the air rapidly.
I'm with the suggestion to go for first refusal, but make it "their bid plus $100" -- that's a big enough jump to entice him to say yes.
But INSPECT BEFORE YOU MAKE THE OFFER. It's been sitting a LONG time.
If you have the money to play with, you might get two of them, using one as a donor if necessary. For that matter, if they're in decent shape, if I had the money I'd be tempted to buy the entire fleet, then sell them off as projects.
This, of course, assumes that there is no corrosion worth worrying about.
