Quilly: WIth the Garand, I wouldn' t be suprised to see copper fouling in the barrel. Alot of the military replacement barrels were fairly rough with tool marks on the inside and pick up hard to remove fouling quickly- this usually doesn' t affect accuracy too much as you can expect a Garand with a new barrel to shoot about 3 MOA regardless. I had a ' new' government issued barrel manufacured in 1944 put on my ' 03 that was very bright and shiny but one could see faint tool marks in the rifling if you looked close enough. After putting about 100 rounds through the barrel, it was very fouled with copper, but didn' t loose any accuracy, but I could not get all of the copper out with a normal cleaning- I might try an electric cleaner next, but I don' t think the little bit of fouling left is going to hurt anything.

On a Garand, the things to look for is a pitted or dark bore cause by shooting alot of corrosive ball ammo without immediate and proper cleaning. The next thing to check is the muzzle condition- put a 30 caliber bullet into the muzzle and make sure the muzzle doesn' t swallow the widest part of the bullet. The other thing to check is the throat erosion with a throat erosion (TE) guage. The amount of TE will determine how much the barrel has been shot and how much life it has left in it. Some gunsmiths might have such a guage and would be able to advise you on the barrel condition- maybe the shop you are buying it from has such a guage on hand.
$850 doesn' t sound like a bad deal for a matching rifle, most of them in my area that I see are upwards of $1000. If you do buy it, don' t go down to your local walmart and buy a box of 30-06 and start shooting, sporting 30-06 ammo is not loaded correctly for a Garand and will bend the op rod/ and or ruin your rifle. You' ll need to make your own handloads using powders with a burn rate similar to IMR 4064 or 4895 which both are good powders for the M1.

If you really want to get some in depth answers to questions, go to the board at jouster.com on the M1 page.