Photo safari

Spring is here, and it's a good season for typewriter hunting. Here are some photo trophies from today's expedition. No guessing game this time: I didn't take home a single one. But I was still pleasantly impressed with the number of typewriters on offer, and many prices were in the reasonable range. I didn't take notes on the prices, so these are according to my best recollection, sometimes assisted by the tag in the photo.

First I returned to the Ohio Valley Antique Mall. There has been a good bit of turnover in the typewriters since my last visit, in mid-February.

First, here's a shiny Underwood Noiseless 77! But with some obvious problems, the $135 price is not a good deal.

A pre-war Smith-Corona Zephyr is a pretty neat find. But as usual, its khaki wrinkle paint is grungy and very unappealing, and one ribbon cover is missing. (I learned that these covers are hinged on the outer side, so it's not that easy to yank one off, but apparently that's what happened.) 50 bucks.

A pretty decent Royal KMM, working fine, for $42. It would need some cleaning and de-rusting. By the way, a similar gray KMM that I saw here last time is still around, but the price has jumped from $22 to $60.

Nice, clean Royal QDL for 40-some dollars. You can see its family resemblance to its daddy above. This could make a good portable for someone at a fair price.

This flattop Corona Standard was kind of grungy. $74.99, I believe.

Here's a slightly later Royal portable, an Aristocrat, again for $40 or so.

Next I headed down the highway to the village of Ross, Ohio, to the mysteriously named Venice Pavilion antique mall. A student had tipped me off that there were some typewriters here, although he said there was nothing that looked unusual.

The first typewriter I found here was the deal of the day: a Smith-Corona Sterling, from just before they introduced the beefier body style, for only $25. A good deal, objectively speaking. Still, I didn't feel my heartstrings tug. It would need repainting to have a good chance of selling at WordPlay. Maybe I should have gone for it, but I let it slide.

They wanted $40 or so for this Smith-Corona Electra with the detached spacebar. No thanks, even if the rounded blue plastic body has a certain appeal. This machine uses the same, simple ultraportable mechanism used by its ancestor, the Zephyr you can see above.

This corner of the mall had some adding machines and sewing machines, including a pretty Challenge. (Hi, Adwoa!)

Another Underwood Noiseless 77, this time with the postwar crinkle finish, reduced to $75 from $90.

With the Underwood Noiseless was this paperwork, including a very interesting tag with unpacking instructions. I recommend enlarging this pic. I've never seen the tag before; it tells us how these machines came shipped from the factory, and thus also provides suggestions for those of us who want to ship them super-safely today.

This ’60s Underwood Five ($45) had a typebar jammed so tightly into the type guide that I could not set it free. Good luck selling this one.

Finally, a "real" Underwood No. 5, circa 1920s, for $130. It typed pretty well, so I typed a pangram and "typosphere.net" on it. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new typospherian!

On the road from Ross to Miamitown there's a nice little wooden roller coaster.

Miamitown used to have several good antique shops, but they've dried up. Still, I enjoyed peeking through the window of a photography studio to find this noble old camera.

Hope you enjoyed the photo safari. Happy hunting, everyone!

Two packages and a love story from Germany

After reading Robert Messenger's post on his Brillant S, I put the model on my mental Want list. Lo and behold, almost immediately, one turned up on eBay. It wasn't cheap, but it was a Buy It Now ... and I did.

Of course I provided the usual packing instructions. Well, a couple of weeks later, look what shows up:




There was no protection at all around the typewriter case, so of course the typewriter did not survive. Both front corners and the right platen knob were broken. Some eBay sellers don't have common sense (as Ted can testify). Fortunately I have received a full refund.



But here's a happier tale.

Another machine I spotted on German eBay recently was a black Torpedo 20, a model I'd admired for a while. I decided to go for it, and won it for just €8.

This machine, in contrast to the Brillant, arrived very well packed, in a big box. But it might have survived even without any box, because the case for this machine—a work of art in itself—is bulletproof cast aluminum, and it holds the typewriter very securely.









Here is the machine itself. It has subtle, flowing lines that need to be appreciated from various angles.





The little red switches above the keyboard are for reversing the ribbon. Only one such switch would be needed, so this is a peculiar feature that shows someone's obsession with symmetry.



Like many other Torpedo models, this one has a segment shift.




It types well and is well made, although the carriage return is not silent as on the later Torpedo 18 (the model that's probably found most often in the US).


The serial number, 613108, dates the machine at 1952.




The paper table folds all the way over, revealing the margin stops attached to its lower edge. This arrangement makes it possible to bypass the margins in a system that is unique to this typewriter, in my experience: you pull the paper table slightly toward you.



Not only is this a beautiful typewriter, but it comes with a beautiful story. The seller recounted that her father was working as an engineer for a mining company, and decided to research the miner's disease silicosis. He bought this typewriter in order to type a thesis on the topic. Her mother, who was working at the same lab, "finally consented to help him with his thesis and did some of the typing for him, and they fell in love." They married in 1953. "Who knows whether they would have married without the assistance of this little Torpedo typewriter? My parents lived together in love for 45 years."




I'm impressed with the elegant design of early '50s German typewriters. Check out the nice lines on this East German Rheinmetall from 1952:



1952 was also the year when the famous Voss with a beefy aluminum body was introduced:



How could anyone resist falling in love in the presence of typewriters like this?

SG1 at work

(If you want to use a carbon ribbon in your own SG1, you may need to alter the rate of ribbon advance. Here's how.)