Also don't forget overseas markets. Machining as a hobby gained worldwide popularity. Almost every industrial region in the world made lathes and mills, but the same is usually not true about shapers. This IMO puts them in the same availability category as jig borers. They're usually imports. (in EU, from Germany, in other countries it might make more sense to get them from USA).
When I became interested in it (7~8 years ago) machining as a hobby was quite rare here in Poland. I bought lots of locally made stuff cheaper than the cost of scrap(that was pretty cheap too back then). I got lots of old NOS tooling people would sell for next to nothing because they considered it almost worthless "grandpa stuff". I also found lots of good deals on ebay and I imported stuff from US, Germany etc.
This all changed with increased popularity of machining youtube channels (including local ones). 2 years ago I still regularly found good deals despite there being lots of people that caught up to the value of this stuff (good looking stuff was already expensive, anything with paint peeling off was often cheap).
These days... Stuff is so expensive it's unbelievable anyone would pay such prices. Often items that look like they're in very poor condition (dividing heads missing cranks, chucks, half broken) have very high asking prices.
