30 Jul 2013

Massed Typewriter Sightings



Prepare yourself to see a lot of horrible photos of typewriters that I didn't buy! It's taken many months, but I finally seem to be finding typewriters locally. It's been almost a year since I moved and I had not found any typewriters locally that were fairly priced for a good 6 months, and certainly nothing special until this month. Before now it was all morbidly overpriced Royals, pretty much. The Fremont Sunday Market, on the other hand, seems to be out there to prove me wrong. (The two photos above were taken the first week of the market. The Contessa had no lid and no price.)











There's this guy who is selling a lot of his typewriters, there every other week. (First week's photos are above. I bought two--see if you can guess which!) The first time I went, he had, for the most part, rather reasonable prices. The second time I went, the prices were increased overall, sometimes significantly. There were a couple that caught my eye, but I decided against buying any because none had the right balance of price vs. interestingness vs. condition. There were plenty of special typefaces, script and techno mostly. But I have typewriters with both of those, so I don't want any more.

I'm showing photos of both the first week and the second week, and you can see some didn't sell the first week. Counterintuitively, some of them had significantly higher prices the second time around.




I did, however, get to try out two Everest K2s! One was absolutely horrible, and missing it's ribbon cover. (He later withdrew it from sale because apparently he had the ribbon cover at home) The other was quite nice though not superb. I would have bought the nicer one, glossy burgundy, had it been in better condition, but it had some chips of paint off the ribbon cover and the E in Everest was missing it's little curlicue. The price was $100. If it had not had those cosmetic faults, I would have paid $80 top. I definitely want one now, but I am going to have to try it out first before buying to make sure it isn't one of "those" Everests.




After the lack of luck the second week, I checked out the rest of the market. I was even more glad that I didn't find anything because of what I saw next! Stay tuned to find out which of these four beauties (seen directly below) found a new home with me. I took type samples of some of the typewriters I saw, and I've blurred out places that are a bit revealing things that are supposed to be surprises.



The horrible shadow over the whole affair was that at some point when I was carrying the find back to my car, my wallet got lost. I drove home (45 minutes away) before I noticed the loss, and I spent the rest of the afternoon frantically searching, driving back, waiting for lost and found to open from their 2 hour break, and finding out that it's probably gone for good.

When I was waiting for lost and found to open back up, I popped into the Fremont Vintage Market which was swarming with 8 or so typewriters. All were below $60 except for one, a Royal standard. Fremont, the supposed centre of the universe, definitely is a major node for typewriters. The Sears Achiever was a surprisingly nice typewriter, and I would like one some day. I think it's by Brother. The Olympia looks pretty in the photo, and it was only $55, but it sadly had a lot of rust behind the SM3 instruction manual in the platen. (It was obviously placed there to hide it so I moved it out of the way in case if somebody bought it without checking!)




So tons of typewriters, and though the day (and admittedly the rest of the week) is tarnished by the wallet incident, it wasn't that bad. The only true loss is the $43 and the actual wallet. The cards and my license can all be replaced.

If anybody out there wants a $40 Olympia SM9 with a special typeface, let me know. If there are any left (chances are, yes) next time I go, I could snag one for you. I'll make sure everything works and it looks nicely, too. You'd have to pay the $40 plus the shipping from Washington, of course.

15 comments:

  1. This is starting to put Geneva to shame.

    The chocolate over cream Torpedo?

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    1. Typewriters are kind of getting to be a thing in that area of Seattle, and it seems to be a recent development. I went to the same vintage mall back last year and there were far fewer typewriters.

      I heard from somebody that a few years back a typewriter store went out of business and the owner had bins and bins full of working manual typewriters for $10 each...

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  2. Oh.My.God! Did this guy raid Mr. Polt's AND Mr. Messenger's inventory? An impressive array of typewriters. Noticed a couple of Corona 4s too, now that I have an itch for one.
    Thanks for the write-up!

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    1. The Corona Fours were quite overpriced. In fact, most of them are now. It is probably for the best because I'd be buying more if that wasn't the case... But it's enjoyable to get to try all of them out and now I have formed different opinions on a couple typewriters because of it.

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  3. Thanks for the photo essay, I've been curious about those ads in CL. I only saw a couple I'd like to have looked at.

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    1. It was probably worth checking out the first time but his prices seem to have elevated sharply on anything that is very interesting. But I want to give it once more chance, I think. There are always other typewriters there, besides.

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  4. A cornicopia of typers! I'm guessing you brought home a Torpedo?

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  5. It has been said by others, but PLEASE tell me you brought home that Torpedo. They are lovely typewriters!

    Also, SM9's. What other typefaces were there? I read senatorial and script. Any chance he had an SM9 in italics? If so, I would be very interested in it. It's the only SM9 typeface I don't have!

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    1. I'd have been a fool to not. :D

      I would have snatched up any SM9 with italics! It's just senatorial, modern pica, and script.

      Though, interestingly, one of the typewriters had a sheet of paper in it that did have an italic font but the typewriter itself didn't. I think it probably was Olympia's italic. Gave me the treasure discovery feeling and everything so it was sad that the typewriter had pica.

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  6. What a bonanza! I am most impressed by the Empire 2.

    Sorry to hear about your wallet, that stinks.

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    1. I don't know how much they are worth, but it might have been an ok deal at $30. But the decals were super worn, keys missing, and the carriage didn't advance. Too much work for me to bother with it. (And hands full of typeewriters at the time anyway...)

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  7. I agree with Rob, this definitely puts Geneva to shame! I don't mind though because I have the feeling your neighborhood has more potential customers for the typewriters, whereas the ones I see here are awfully hard to sell. The increase in prices is probably due to thefact that the seller had so much interest the first time around. I definitely have never seen this many interesting typewriters (with different typestyles!) in the same place, so great job getting the pictures to share with us - and type samples too! So sorry to hear about your wallet though, that's no fun.

    Looking forward to seeing what you ended up getting!

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    1. There definitely is a market here, and I don't have as much as restraint (and probably more space) as you do! They were selling much slower the second time though. When I went back to search for my wallet a few hours later, they were almost all still there whereas when I first went he'd sold at least 5 within the first 30 minutes (2 to me, 2 to another lady, and then one other).

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  9. Ohh dear!! I would like to own a SM9 with a special typeface :D

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