COMPLIMENTARY COPY
VOL. 43, NO. 10 FRIDAY MARCH 9, 2012
Published Weekly By Joel Sater Publications www.antiquesandauctionnews.net
A Collecting Hobby For All Types O
n February 5, CBS four-row QWERTY keyboard Index typewriters Sunday Morning with a shift for capitals to devices with no keyran a story about activate typebars that struck board that require “the typewriter renaisyou to point at a sance.” Really? In the age letter on an of Facebook, Twitter, index - were and the iPad? cheap machines Yes: people for those who have been discouldn’t afford covering or an expensive rediscovering office typemanual typew r i t e r. writers as a M a n y way to produce makes of tangible, perindex typesonal text writers are that shows expensive colcare and lectibles today; effort. This even the more comtrend is just one mon index machines, side of a collecting such as the field with many possibilities. The most established area of typewriter collecting focuses on Fox, an Art machines over Nouveau u p a century old. against It was back in understroke ($300). a ribbon to 1873 that the Sholes & create immediGlidden Type Writer intro- ately visible writing. duced the QWERTY key- Portable typewriters board and got the became popular in the American writing machine 1920s and electric industry started. Mark typewriters in the Twain, an early adopter of 1950s. The IBM one of these “curiosity- Selectric of 1961 breeding little jokers,” sub- set the standard for mitted a typescript of his quality office machines Life on the Mississippi. By until the 1980s, when the 1880s the Sholes & electronic daisy wheel Olivetti Glidden and its successors, typewriters became the Graphika, a now branded Remington, dominant design. Daisy 1957 Italian model had been joined by a few wheel machines are still rivals. Then the 1890s saw manufactured today by that types proportionally (difan explosion of wild and companies such as Swintec, ferent letters have different wonderful designs, as and a few manual portables widths) ($300). inventors scrambled to are still made in China. take advantage of what The highest-valued American, Merritt, Odell, was becoming an office makes of and Peoples, often top $500. necessity without infringt y p e The good news for those ing on each other’s patents. writers of us with less spending This is the decade with a r e money is that some interestthe greatest usual- ing makes of early typewritdiversity l y ers can often be purchased in the in good condition for only t y p e $100 to $200. The writer Hammond uses swiveling “shuttles” with interChicago, changeable typefaces, a typeand a hammer that cylinder hits the paper machine against a ribbon of the from the rear. 1890s The Smith Premier features ($700). separate keys for world, including upper- and lowermany odd rarities case letters and has that did not succeed in the rare an “understroke” marketplace and are valumechanism: like the able today. Everything was Sholes & Glidden and up for grabs: whether to Victorian many others, it use a keyboard, how many machines. A types onto the keys a keyboard would thoroughly refurbished bottom of the have and in what arrange- Sholes & Glidden recently platen (the rubment, the inking system, sold on eBay for $14,900. A b e r - c o v e r e d the typing mechanism, and Skrivekugle or Writing Ball cylinder), so the size and expense of the - a rare Danish rival to the you can’t see device. Sholes & Glidden that looks what you’ve typed After 1900, the market like a pincushion - can bring right away. The coalesced around a small $50,000. The New Model Blickensderfer is a number of major manufac- Crandall of the 1880s, a cur- little three-row, douturers and the design of vaceous machine that’s ble-shift typewriter that typewriters became more inlaid with mother-of-pearl uses a rotating typewheel standardized: the typical and uses an interchangeable and an ink roller. The typewriter, such as the type cylinder, easily brings Oliver is unmistakable, with Underwood, now used a $5,000. typebars in the shape of
inverted U’s ris- Classic Typewriter Page in ing up 1995; other longstanding websites include The Virtual Typewriter Museum, typewritercollector.com, and antiquetypewriters.com. Another area of the hobby focuses on ephemera. There’s an
Olympia SM3, a custompainted example of a wellmade 1950s West German portable ($300). to the left and right of the printing point. A serious collector or dealer in antique typewriters will need to bone up on technical differences among the various typing systems and get some good reference works to learn about the hundreds of models and variants that have been documented. Darryl Rehr’s Antique Typewriters & Office Collectibles is an excellent first book. Michael A d l e r ’ s Antique
abundance of typewriter advertising, photographs, and documentation that provides glimpses into the vanished worlds that created our machines. Typewriter ephemera are especially interesting for the light they shed on women’s history, as typing skills gave many women an entry into the business world (where they often encountered sexual harrassment and a not-soglassy ceiling). Here, as always, value depends on supply and demand. A rare brochure for the even rarer Blickensderfer Electric typewriter of 1902 easily brings over $100; a comic stereo view of an amorous boss and his typist might go for $25; a common postcard of the
Remington
Typewriters, Noiseless from Creed to Portable, a twoQWERTY is a more tone green version thorough reference of a popular 1930s book with realistic values. Of course, machine ($200). there are also many resources online. I “Giant Underwood” created started The by that company for a world’s fair might cost $5. Over the last decade, a new breed of typewriter collector has gained in strength: these collectors are less interested in antique oddities than in the colorful portable typewriters of the twentieth century. These machines often sell for $30 to $100. You might start with a Corona 3, a cute machine made from the teens to the 1930s that folds down onto its keyboard for Salter compactness. The 6, an ele- Remington portables, gant British both conventional and machine from the “noiseless,” come in
early 20th ($2,000).
century
(Continued on page 2)