Papa Bär und Bärenmutter

A lucky Craigslist alert brought me this mint condition late 50's, early 60's SG1 (machine on the left).  Now I have Papa Bear and Mother Bear.  All I need is a Splendid to have an Olympia family!  In other news, I am going tonight to pick up a local machine I found on eBay this week.  Guess what it will be:

• Portable
• Diagonal stripes
• It is not black

Typewriter Travels and Visits

All in all, it has been a busy typewriter week.  I had the opportunity to travel to Tom Furrier's typewriter shop, Cambridge Typewriter, near Boston to attend his Type-Out yesterday.  It was great to visit his shop and hang out with the typewriter crowd.  I'll let Tom post his pictures and describe the event on his own blog first, but I will tease you with a picture featuring my Singer (Royal Safari) and my Corona Four.  Thanks Tom for hosting such a fun event.  

It's been a busy typewriter week at school too.  A few of my students are continuing to take apart the broken Super Sterling that I had set out for them.  One of my students is becoming a real typewriter collector himself and brought his 1930 Royal P to show me.  That's one proud typewriter collector.  He also brought by his 1970's Olympia SM8 which I grouped with my 1960's SM8 and my SM3 for this nice Olympia x 3 photo.  

Starring Role for a Typewriter: Ruby Sparks

Olympia-cast and a Sneak Peak

I put a new ribbon in my Olympia SM8 and took it out for a typecast. You can see that it types just as well as I thought it would.

And now for the sneak peak....I got two new typewriters today.  A parent at school who collected military antiques gave me a dog-tag pressing machine.  Quite a cool object but not something that fits in with my collection.  The husband of one of my teachers does collect military items and traded me two typewriters for it.  I only got to look at them for a few minutes, so here is a sneak peak at these two typers.  Can you guess what they are?

Tell Them What You're Looking For!

I had high hopes for finding typewriters this past weekend. That's right, I said typewriters. Montpelier had a city-wide tag sale with forty-two locations. I had dreamed of coming home with a number of typewriters in the trunk of my car. I started out early and went to almost every sale. I did find a couple of typewriters for sale, a 1970's Webster, a brand for a Japanese Brother machine and a 1980's Royal that was mostly plastic. Despite not seeing any interesting machines, I let people know what I was looking for. As always, most people are delighted when you talk about typewriters. A woman brought out her 1930's Remington Boxy Number 5. She had no plans to sell it but I did get to tell her about my Type-In and show her how to change the ribbon. I went to one last church tag sale which was closing up, again no typewriters but there was a nice woman named Pam who said she might still have her old Olympia at home.  She gave me her number and said she would check. Well, she did have that Olympia, Serial #3036572, a 1967 SM8. 

You can see from the pictures, this machine is in 

perfect condition.

  

I have never seen mechanicals this clean!

I have a new ribbon on order and will send a typecast from this machine soon!

Trash to Treasure: My SM3

I have learned that it pays to let people know that you are collecting typewriters.  So that is why I asked the young lady who works at the trash depot if she ever came across any typewriters.  She said that she actually did have one at home and would bring it by- which was weeks and weeks ago.  Today my patience paid off when I dropped off my trash and she told me that she had that typewriter in her car.  I had pretty much already decided that I would buy whatever she had brought so it was a fantastic surprise to see that she had a beautiful SM3 in the trunk of her car.  I asked her how much she wanted for it and she said, "I don't know, make me an offer."  I said $10 and it was mine.  Ten bucks! I took it home and while I've only checked it out a bit, it seems in perfect shape.  Even the cool batmobile-like case is in great shape.  More to come for sure on this typer!