Typewriter by Typewriter Breakdown - #3

Round 3, in which I show and tell about typewriters #13-18 in my seemingly endless collection. Things are looking up as I mostly present machines I'm not completely ashamed to own.

This poorly-lit beauty is a Royal Heritage, circa 1958. These were apparently exclusive at the time to Montgomery-Ward stores. This one was $15, I believe, and extremely filthy at the time I got it...but it cleaned up nicely and it works well. No major flaws with this one. Push the Royal emblem on the front and the ribbon cover pops right up. When I purchased it, it still had a very old square Roytype ribbon in it, completely dried out.

I've been a computer guy for a long time, since the mid-'90s, but there was a time when I wouldn't touch one. In fact, I sought out and purchased a manual typewriter in 1988 for $80 from a used office supply store. It was identical to this one, the (Brother) Montgomery Ward Signature 510. This one has a standard typeface, but the one I formerly owned had a weird capital italic font. My old one is pretty beaten up, missing the case and ribbon cover, but is now the property of my mother and living in her storage room. It does still work though, because I put a ribbon on it last year and tested it out. I felt nostalgic about buying this, but it's not that great compared to everything else I own. Works fine, for a Japanese typewriter made in the 1960s.

I was typewriter-less for over 15 years, until 2010, when I literally stumbled over this for $10 at a thrift store in East Texas. It's a Sears Citation 12, made by Smith-Corona. It's a deep green with a fake woodgrain insert above the keys. Classy. Nice and heavy, with a slightly extended carriage that looks to be able to take larger paper. Works really well still. No major problems with it that I can detect.

 I love these later Underwoods, but they're getting harder to find. They seemed to have come in a variety of colors, but I've mostly seen blue and white for sale. This one is just beautiful, a nice clean Jewell. It types like a dream, but it stops like a nightmare at the end of the line...sadly, the bell is broken. But a broken bell is not the worst thing to happen to a typewriter, and I know it can ultimately be fixed. It's been known to happen, even if I don't currently have the skills to pull it off.

A fine later Underwood that does work is this wonderful green '55 Universal Quiet Tab. This one cost me $20 in 2010. It literally looks like a Buick. It works perfectly and I adore it. When it came, the ribbon vibrator had come off and was loose inside the typewriter. Fixed it in just a few minutes without having any idea what I was doing. I have a strange connection to these old machines...probably a past life thing. I should ask the Long Island Medium, if she still takes those kind of questions.

A seemingly too-good-to-be-true Ebay purchase turned out to be true, and this Royal Arrow came to me at a great price. It's in seemingly mint condition, with only a suspicious scratch and small dent on the side that I suspect happened in the shipping process (it had not been secured properly inside its case). But, otherwise, looks and performs like a brand new 65-year-old typewriter. Very happy with it, though it needs to be used fairly regularly to keep the ribbon vibrator from sticking. I tested it out just before taking these pictures and it worked fine.

That's #13-18. Believe it or not, this is about a third of my collection. As I say, I do have a problem. In a day or two I'll post up some more. In my spare time, in addition to hocking my poorly-selling stories on Amazon, I also collect sleazy 1960s/'70s  private eye/spy novels and other series fiction paperbacks. If anything is more obscure and weird than typewriters, that's probably it. 

Typewriter by Typewriter Breakdown - #2

Back for with more typewriters from my collection, this time #'s 7-12. Again, these aren't in a specific order. I just pulled them off the shelf and took pictures. I'm considerably happier with the typers in this selection than the last, because they for the most part work.

This Smith-Corona Sterling is my latest addition, having arrived just a few days ago. They sold millions of the Clipper/Sterling/Silent family and I have several variations of this model, some that look exactly like this one. This one, though a bit dirty and with a broken back hinge on the case, works perfectly well. At some point I'd like to get some serials on them and find out just when they were made...but there are only so many hours in each day. But they're at least fifty years old. We used to make good stuff, here in the USA.

The Tower President XII was made by Smith-Corona and sold by Sears. This one has a unique unpleasant odor that escapes each time I open the case. I love the two-tone color and the diamond-shaped keys. It types remarkably well, though I'm pretty sure the bell doesn't work. My main gripe with this one is the shift lever. Essentially you have to manually scroll to the next line because it doesn't catch. I'm sure it can be fixed, but I'm not skilled enough to fix it yet and don't want to further damage it.

This Hermes 3000 is a very clean and beautiful example of Swiss engineering. It's a lovely machine that's very precise. It has one issue though, and it's a pretty important and annoying one:  random skipping. It can't really go through a line or two without it happening at least once. If you catch it, you can backspace and fix it, but that doesn't really solve the problem. I love it, though. It's like typing with a tank.

This Remington (insert model name here) I picked up for $25 a few years back, I think. A typical quirky Remington, with the weird spools and all. Works fine, save for the space bar, which you sometimes have to hit twice to get it to catch. But it's not like the Cole Steel, which you practically have to beat to death to get it to advance one space.

Circa 1948, a Remington-Rand Portable Deluxe. I dig the round keys, and it works fine, but you really have to be over it to type. It's very old-school in that it's not that easy to see exactly what you're typing as you type. When I started collecting typewriters in 2010, this was the second one I bought, and the first one I got from Ebay. I paid like $20 for it.

This is a personal favorite, and if I had to sell my entire collection except for one, this would be the one I kept. I have checked the serial on this and it's a 1934 Royal Model O with Touch Control. I also paid more for this one than any other machine I own, about $60. Shiny paint, beautiful glass keys, types like a dream...I'm very happy with it. I've used it extensively and I can't say enough good things about it. Just a beautiful machine.

That's #7-12 of my collection. The next few shelves will probably be the Underwood portables and the many, many similar Smith-Coronas. The electrics might be last, because I am racist against them and their sort.

Typewriter by Typewriter Breakdown - #1

I thought I'd put my money where my mouth is and start documenting my collection here. Never have so many orphaned, broken typewriters been accumulated in such a small space. In no particular order, I do typewriters #1-6 today. These are mainly posted because they were out of their cases for me to easily photograph.

Oh, Remington Noiseless. This one is a heartbreaker. The first problem I encountered was when I tried to put paper in it. The second problem was when I tried to advance it. The third problem was when I hit the return. It types well enough, once you manage to get the paper in (you have to use the paper release and feed it through)...but the space bar sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. And the platen won't advance the paper correctly. But the bell works, there's that. Came to me without a case.

This Underwood Universal looks beaten up, but works fine. Everything works as it should even though it got a LOT of use.  No case when it got to me, but I haven't found any issues with it besides the letters on the keytops wearing off and the paint chipping. I ordered some stick-on key covers from Amazon and put them on. They aren't as straight as they should be, but they work okay.

Underwood Noiseless, like the Underwood Universal and Remington Noiseless above, came to me without a case. This is a good typewriter. Very shiny and clean. My main problem with it is the carriage return. It's very small, and you basically have to flick it from above. It's so different from other return levers I found it annoying. I didn't get it in the pictures I took of it, but it's very small. The bell also doesn't work on this one, which is a shame.

The Royal HH is a fine, heavy typewriter. This one was missing the number 7 key, so I was able to cannibalize one from the old broken Smith-Corona desktop I could never do anything with. The bell works, but seems to stop just short of it. I was trying it out earlier and noticed it skipped once during a paragraph. No major issues detected with this one.

This Underwood Standard is one of the heaviest things I own, and I drive a Chevy. The bell seems hit and miss sometimes, and the carriage wants to slide all the way over if you turn it on its side, but it's in place when you're typing. The keytops are wearing off, so the extra stick-on letters I have might come in handy.

This Cole Steel is a beautiful machine, and it types cleanly and is pretty neat. But the backspace doesn't work, and if you hit the space bar you had better mean it. I mean you practically have to punch the damn thing. These don't come up a lot that I've seen, though the ones I see don't cost that much. I really wanted to own one, though I can now see why I wouldn't use it very much. I'm not sure how much I paid...but I'm notoriously frugal in my typewriter purchases, so it couldn't have been that much.

When I get a little more time I'll list the next 5 or 6 typewriters. Probably a few days. I await the final two stragglers I have coming in the mail, and I'll give the details when I get them in.

And We're Back.

I must admit my time has been consumed lately. Been doing some writing (Randy X. Porter on Amazon) and have been working a good bit. Also have been acquiring many books I've been missing from places like Ebay and Abebooks. Private eye series fiction about Mike Shayne and Shell Scott, mostly.

I hadn't bought a typewriter in months. Last week I bought...a few. Five. No, six. I now own 52 machines, though I await the arrival of a few of them in the mail.

I can't begin to understand how my mind works. Maybe it's broken.

Here are a few current shots of the Deep East Texas Broken Typewriter Museum. When the last few arrive, I will be completely out of space. Actually, I'm already out of space.

It's hard to find the time to maintain them, make sure they still work, keep the dust off them. I like to think as time goes on I will be able to do it all, but I won't. Writing, full-time job, something has to give.

I hope to keep this blog updated but I've failed to recently. When my new children begin arriving in the mail I hope to offer updates.

A Second Opinion

Was out again today prowling antique and thrift stores. Same old machines, marked at their high prices, not selling. I told you about the Tower President a few weeks ago that was marked $6 and I believed it to be an error in pricing. Today it was still there. I looked around the booth (in an antiques mall) and noticed that all of the vendor's goods there were ridiculously cheap. A huge stand-up radio from the '30s was $32.50, some books were $1.25. I took the typewriter to the front of the store to confirm the price on the tag. It was correct. The lady at the counter told me that the vendor attended a lot of auctions and estate sales and didn't really care if he made a huge profit on his stuff. Well, all right then. I bought it. You don't have to tell me twice.

Finally, a President I would actually vote for.

Now, you may remember there was another Tower President I had looked at. This one was in perfect physical condition except none of the keys worked.  I saw that one again today, unsold. I think it was still marked $25. No deal. The one I bought actually works, if a bit rusty. I noticed the space bar seemed broken, but it's just the plastic part of it coming loose. It can be snapped back on or otherwise repaired. No big deal, and still a bargain at $6.

No. Just no. Stop pretending to be a typewriter.

I consider it a mark of semi-maturity that I did not buy this one. I did check it out and found it to be lacking. If it was $5, maybe...but $12.99? For a cheap plastic Chinese-made Generation 3000 typewriter? And allegedly one of the worst typewriters ever made? I can't have it mixing with my other machines. It would be bad karma, and a bad influence on the rest of my children. I understand that some people would be fine with it...and maybe it does work, who knows? But it's not for me. Also, when I was young, I heard a tale of an Asian fellow, who, while playing a prank, put urine into the soft drink of another gentleman. I guess you had to be there.

Another day, another $60 typewriter. 

This Remington looked promising, but the $59.99 price tag put me off. I didn't even check it out. I find it disappointing that the price point for used typewriters in Lufkin (with very few exceptions) is around $60.  This isn't practical in the real world. The most expensive typewriter I've ever purchased on Ebay, shipping included, came in well under that price. But of course I've bought a lot of broken crap, so go figure.