A gift I couldn't take

My day went fairly well. I woke up around noon. Did laundry. Practiced guitar for a little while. Wired some money back home at the bank around the corner. Went to my Chinese lesson with Alice. This is when my day went from being pleasant to ... extraordinary. Well, previously I had written that my Chinese teacher is very generous and often gives me little gifts. She had told me the week before that she had a camera from her days in university sitting in her closet and because I have taken an interest in photography, she would like to give it to me. I thought, "Wow, that's awfully nice of her but it probably wasn't a very good one since she didn't even remember what kind of camera it was." The thought quickly retreated to the back of my mind. So today we met in our usual meeting place at Ikari Cafe. We chatted about what I had done earlier in the day. Then, while lifting a large black case said she had brought her old camera with her to give to me. I was a bit anxious to see what make it was but skeptical nonetheless. She gingerly placed it on the granite table we were sitting at and let me take it out of its case. Looking at the back I knew it was an older style SLR; I thought it's probably a Pentax K1000, a typical intro to photography student camera. But as soon as I laid my eyes on the face of the camera, I almost fell off my chair. It was a beautifully kept Nikon FM2. One of the best all manual SLR cameras ever made. I couldn't believe my eyes; I couldn't speak for a few seconds. She insisted that I take it but I asked her if she knew what the camera was worth. She had no idea. I told her I couldn't take such a gift and that I would teach her how to use it again. Refused. Said she wasn't interested. She wanted me to have it. Then, I said I'd give her money for it, buy it off of her and after 10 or 15 minutes of the usual Chinese way of insisting the other take the money, she agreed that she would accept money from me only after I took it to a store to see if there was any damage for it hadn't been used for 15 years. Upon closer inspection, I could see mold not only covering the filter, but inside the actual lens as well. I knew it wouldn't be an easy cleaning job. This is an FM2. I don't care how long it takes to clean it.

I'm at home right now, researching info about the camera and looking up lenses on eBay. The camera is going for a couple hundred dollars and the lens was going for 275 US. I can't believe she was going to give it to me. I'm glad I persuaded her to accept some money or else I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight. I'll take it into Leeta Photography tomorrow to assess the damage and let you know.