My guess: somebody who got it for pennies on the dollar, blew an engine mid-flight, discovered that fixing it was logistically and financially daunting... Maybe that first kid or the needs of the family farm or somesuch also helped bring home the cost of blasting around the sky for amusement on a rather stonking amount of high-octane gas. Today we think of them as rare and precious things, and important artifacts of history, and display them in museums or have restoration shops "zero-time" them at great expense, but once upon a time, a vast aerial armada went begging. Planes that were war weary, excess to drastically reduced needs, or simply obsolete at the dawn of the jet age (pick one or more) went quite cheaply, and in fact most were recycled as scrap. Reminds me of a story a Canadian friend told about how Lancasters could be had for about the value of the fuel in their tanks and the glycol in their engines, whereupon farmers converted the fuselages into chicken houses or other outbuildings. See also http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/455/Last-Call-for-Lancasters.aspx
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