Jack Allison wrote:

We're looking here in CA and there are some but nothing worth
mentioning.
snip

The search for a good one can take a long time. My 1st plane took 3
months, and I found it by word of mouth. A friend at the aiport had
seen the guy put a "for sale" sign in the window and called me within
the hour. The second one I found sitting on a broker's ramp when I
went to go look at another plane. It had just arrived and had not yet
been advertised. I didn't go for the original plane, but snapped up
the new arrival before anyone else knew it was available.

Recently I've seen a fairly novel approach. Someone who was looking
for a good Cherokee 180 got the FAA owners list and sent postcards to
the owners. He also requested that if the recipient knew of anyone
that had a 180 for sale, to please pass on the contact info. I called
the guy because I knew of one for sale in a neighboring state. He'd
already found one, but shared his search method with me. To keep costs
down, he started off by sending cards to 180 owners in his home state.
Next he sent them to owners in states bordering his. The third mailing
expanded the search radius by one more state. He got lucky on the
third mailing.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)