12-year old, PR4 Domain... how to transfer?

[bgmarket]

I'm in negotiations to buy a 12-year old, PR4 domain in an ecommerce niche. It used to be a full ecommerce site, but the owner retired, and for the past 5 months the only hosted page has been the main page with a 'goodbye' note. It's still indexed by google on the first page for two important keywords, and has around 150 backlinks. Most of the backlinks go to the main page, but some of the backlinks go to now defunct pages. Two super newbie questions:

When I take control of the domain, should I put copies of my product page at the defunct backlink addresses, or just a page that automatically redirects to my original product page?

How do I go about transferring a domain so that it doesn't lose its 12-year old status? What services are recommended for conducting this transaction?

 

[kofiannan]

Do a .htaccess redirect for the defunct pages (in fact, the current owner should do that now). It won't lose status has it hasn't dropped prior to you taking over. Use an escrow service for the transfer. People transfer domains all the time so your current hosting company will have guidelines on what you need to do. Or to make it easy you can just sign up with whatever hosting it's on now.