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Anybody else use them or love them? heart

Last year for NaNo I hopped on the Typewriter Brigade bandwagon and wrote about a fourth of my novel on a typewriter. I've got thirteen machines now.

You can see most of them on my flickr.

You can find them all over, you just have to look.

My first two machines (the Olympia and Royal KHM) came from an estate auction. I paid $17.50 each for them. The Brother I got at Goodwill for $15. I've passed up probably about 5 other different electric typewriters from Goodwill; they seem to have at least one every time I go in, but I've never been lucky enough to find a manual there. And then, like I said, my most recent two I got at garage sales.

Flea markets, antique shops, and other thrift stores are all places you could find them. Browse your local Craigslist listings, or put out a wanted ad on Craigslist for one.

Always try to haggle in environments where you can! My new Quiet DeLuxe was marked at $45, but I talked the lady down to $25 (which is the most I've paid for a typewriter yet).

I had an electric typewriter until last summer, when my mother determined that "we had no use for it anymore" and donated it.

When I was a kid, we had both the electric typewriter and a manual typewriter, and I loved playing with them.

I would kill for a nice typewriter, but what kind of maintenance etc do they require?

Also, PMS is a smelly face.

Thanks for the advice, perhaps once I've written my first novel (or two) I will consider buying one.

And another new machine!

A Royal Companion, from Goodwill for $5.38. It looks similar to the QDL -- I'll have to investigate what the differences are.

Sadly. I'm just not good enough. emo

I went on a typewriter adventure today!

Cross-posted from the Yahoo! TYPEWRITERS group:

I decided to go typewriter hunting today since it's my day off! I left home this morning with $50 in my pocket and intending to hit up two Goodwills, a Salvation Army, and an antique/collectibles store called The Cellar Door which is one of those places I always think I should stop at when driving past but I never do.

I stopped by the Goodwill near my house first, not expecting anything interesting because I went there last week. There had been three electric typewriters there before; today there was one, and I left it again. Next stop was The Cellar Door... or would have been, but it was closed. The Salvation Army was also closed. Disappointing!

At the second Goodwill I broke my promise to myself to not buy any more electric machines and walked out with a Smith-Corona Display 900 for $6.38. Included were two brand-new packages, one with two ribbon cartridges and one with a correction tape cartridge. I couldn't let that slide! I also picked up what I thought was the cover, but upon arriving home found that it didn't fit. Oh well.

On my way back home I stopped on the main street's little ped mall where there were several antique shops. The first one had nothing. The second shop had two desktop manuals, a Remington Standard No. 10 and an L.C. Smith (not sure of the model, I didn't take a close look). I was more interested in the Remington, so I got it off the floor to play with. It seemed to be in pretty decent shape, save for it wouldn't type as the spring had become detached. I decided I wanted it anyway, and haggled the price down from $47 to $30. Even if I can't fix the spring, it's a good machine for experimenting with restoration!

Out of typewriter money, I began hunting for smaller things. The third antique shop I stopped in had a whole bunch of vintage postcards, and I found three postcards featuring typewriters which I bought for $1 each. Then I wandered the rest of the store and passed up a very rusty, non-working Oliver No. 9 that was marked $35, a Remington Rand with its case in very good working condition marked $80 (way out of my budget anyway), and another Remington portable which didn't work, also marked $35. I also passed up an old typing instruction workbook that was geared towards typewriters and marked at $15, which I did have the money for but decided I didn't want.

After that it was to a little paperback book store, but their fiction section was almost non-existent and they referred me over to Half-Price Books. It was on my way back home, so I stopped there. I searched the collectibles/antiques section to no avail, then the lady referred me to the science/technology section where I found a couple books on inventions that covered typewriters, but nothing like what I was looking for. I wandered over to my usual haunt, the writing reference section. There I discovered a copy of "The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting" and bought that for $8 and some change.

Happy and broke I headed home, whereupon I was berated by my brother for bringing home more typewriters. My purchases today bring me up to 13 machines (5 electric, 8 manual). I've come a long way since my very first two typewriters bought last May!