i sell typewriters for a living. here's what i'd buy.
There are seriously diminishing returns when you buy a typewriter.
I suppose it might be better for business if I told you that every additional hundred dollars gets you another hundred dollars' worth of typewriter, and that a $700 machine is therefore three or four times as good as the perfectly serviceable Royal sitting next to it.
But it isn't.
A bunch of money won't necessarily buy you a better typewriter. It might, however, buy you a typewriter you're more excited about. And that matters more than it sounds like it should. If buying the beautiful one means you're going to leave it out on your desk, put paper in it, and actually use the instrument as it's supposed to be used, then you did get something for the extra money.
The trick is knowing what you're paying for. At some point, you're not paying for a typewriter that works better anymore. You're paying for one you like better. Maybe it's a particular typing experience, or a color, or a typeface. Maybe it's rare. Maybe you have fallen hopelessly in love with one particular machine.
All of these are totally legitimate reasons to spend money on a typewriter. But they're also not the same reason.
So, if I were spending my own money, here's what I'd buy.
Under $100: Buy the Opportunity
A hundred dollars is a fun and funny price in the typewriter market.
It's very often the "I don't know what I have but I know I want to make some money" price. Somebody has an old typewriter. They know old things are sometimes valuable. They don't know whether they have a $40 typewriter or a $400 typewriter, but $100 sounds sufficiently antique-store-ish, and onto Facebook Marketplace it goes.
This means people sell all kinds of typers for $100.
At the Benjamin price point, I'm expecting something at the very least a little dusty and perhaps in need of some TLC. I'm not expecting a new ribbon. I'll almost certainly have to clean some type slugs. There might be a sticky key or two or a whole bunch.
As a result I wouldn't shop especially hard for a particular model if I only had a hudred dollars to spend. I'd look for something dependable, common enough that replacement parts aren't impossible to find, and simple enough that ordinary problems remain ordinary problems.
Any of the Smith-Corona 5-series machines are terrific candidates. So are Royal Quiet De Luxes. Both were made in enormous numbers, both are fundamentally excellent typewriters, and there are enough dead ones lying around that finding parts doesn't require an archaeological expedition.
But I'd also keep my eyes open, because the fun of the $100 bracket is that something much more interesting can show up there simply because the seller doesn't know what it is.
There's an enormous caveat here: I fix typewriters.
If I have $250 and can choose between a completely sorted but ordinary machine and a more desirable machine with a problem I know I can remediate, I'm probably taking the latter. If the problem is outside my abilities, I'm taking the more practical machine.
Your own abilities need to be part of your budget. A $75 bargain that immediately requires $200 worth of professional attention is not really a $75 typewriter anymore, is it?
$200–250: Buy What You Like
Give me somewhere around $200 to $250 and I'm probably buying an American portable from the 1960s.
Royal. Smith-Corona. Something in that universe.
There are piles of wonderful machines here: Royal Safaris and QDLs and Customs, Smith-Corona Galaxies, Classics, Sterlings, and their various siblings and relatives. They're generally abundant, parts are available, and a good one has that cushioned American typewriter feel that's very easy to get used to.
At $100, I'm looking at what turned up. At $250, I can start asking what I actually want.
Do I want blue? Cream? Gray? Something wonderfully, obnoxiously sixties? Do I like rounder bodies or the more angular ones? Do I want a pica or elite typeface? Do I care about a tabulator? Touch control? What kind of case do I want? What practical features or completely unnecessary nice-to-haves would make me enjoy this particular machine?
This price should also buy you a typewriter in reasonable working condition. Not necessarily a flawless one, and certainly not a typewriter magically transported here untouched from 1964. But something you can actually use.
And for a lot of people, this is plenty of typewriter.
$350–400: Buy an Experience
By the time I'm spending somewhere around $300 to $350, I think I should be able to buy a typewriter that doesn't make me think about the typewriter while I'm trying to write.
Everything I need to work should work. Every feature I use should either function or be something the machine can accommodate. I shouldn't be worrying about the uppercase-lowercase alignment every time I hit Shift. I shouldn't have three typebars sticking halfway up to the platen. I shouldn't have to develop a special ritual to make the ribbon advance.
Put paper in. Type.
But $300 means different things. Three hundred dollars spent on a Brother JP-series portable and $300 spent on a Hermes 3000 are doing two very different things at that price point. The first might buy you an unusually nice example of a relatively common machine. The second might simply be the price of admission to owning a semi-functional Hermes 3000.
Price is not a quality grade.
Once the basic mechanical questions are out of the way, this is where I'd start looking at Olivetti Letteras. An Olympia SM3 or SM7. Adlers. Maybe some of the stranger European brands and models that I couldn't reasonably expect to find in a lower bracket.
And this is also where I'd stop thinking exclusively about whether a machine is "good."
How do you want the thing to feel?
Everybody looks for something different. I'm looking for a sound as well as a feel, for an overall sense of the character of the machine. I'm feeling the resistance of the keys and their return, but I'm also hearing the smack against the platen. I'm listening for the bell. I'm feeling the charge of the carriage and the weight of the shift.
Typing on a manual typewriter is a multisensory experience. It defies reducing the whole thing to something like, "Oh, I like a short keystroke."
The famous machines have reputations to uphold because they're very good machines. But a Hermes 3000, an Olympia SM3, and an Olivetti Lettera 32 aren't all "the same" any more than every high-end luxury vehicle offers the same ride, look, drivability, or experience.
(They're also very easy ways to overspend before you know what feels good underneath your fingertips.)
I have a fair example of this...
I absolutely love the Royalite 65 model and the many closely related machines that appeared under different names and brands. I think they're sublime little typers. They can be had easily and cheaply. Parts are abundant. They're not too clacky, not too imposing, and many of them came with nice little zipper or leatherette snap cases.
The Royalite does for me what an Adler Tippa or an Olivetti Lettera 32 does for a lot of other people.
Meanwhile, I don't particularly like the Hermes 3000.
(I know.)
It's a responsive typer. It's thoughtfully designed. It handles nicely. I understand exactly why people love them.
It also feels over-engineered to me. Bulky. Just too much typewriter. I don't need everything it offers, nor do I particularly want it. And it doesn't help that I find the Hermes 3000 ugly no matter which of its three major iterations we're talking about.
None of this means the Hermes 3000 isn't a great typewriter. It obviously is. I just don't want one.
And that's a useful thing to know about oneself before spending $700.
$500–600: Buy the Nicest Version of Something You Already Love
If I had $500 or $600 to spend, I wouldn't immediately start looking for some supposedly higher "class" of typewriter.
I'd buy the nicest example I could find of one of my favorite typers.
Maybe I'd look for an Olivetti 32 with a Techno typeface, which for me would be the ultimate combination. Maybe it's an unusual color. Maybe it's simply an exceptionally clean example of exactly the machine I already know feels right underneath my fingers.
And I think there's an important rule here.
Don't spend $600 discovering what kind of typewriter you like. Spend $600 after you've discovered it.
Figure out what you like first. Then spend the money.
$700 and Up: Buy the One You Want
If money were no object, I'd start looking seriously at color, typeface, condition, and rarity as selling points.
An Olivetti Valentine.
A Hermes 3000, yes, despite everything I just said, if that's your machine.
A cubic Olympia SM7.
A cursive Adler with a jet-black body.
A bright pink Royal Quiet De Luxe in perfect condition.
We are no longer pretending that these machines type proportionately better than a nice $250 Smith-Corona. They don't have to.
If you tell me that the $750 pink Royal makes you want to sit down and type every time you walk past it, while the $250 gray one would stay zipped inside its case, I don't think you wasted $500.
If it gets you to sit down and type, any factor that results in the desired outcome can be worth the extra cash.
Just know that this is what you're buying.
A Few Ways to Spend Too Much on Your First Typewriter
There are some remarkably easy ways to do this:
- Chase rarity before you know what you actually enjoy typing on.
- Pay a huge premium for a color without knowing whether you like the machine underneath the paint.
- Assume expensive means better to type on.
- Assume older automatically means better built.
- Buy the famous model because everybody says it's the famous model.
- Ignore the considerable risk of having an old mechanical machine badly packed and shipped across the country.
- Treat phrases like "fully restored" as though they have a standardized meaning. They don't.
Care about reputation. Care about model. Care about rarity.
Just don't care about any of them so much that you forget you're buying a typewriter.
So Why Buy One From Me?
There's an obvious question hanging over all of this.
If you can find a Smith-Corona for $100, why would you buy a similar Smith-Corona from me for $300?
The answer is typability, mostly.
You're paying for a machine that doesn't have sticking keys. The ribbon will be new. The platen will be usable, if not relatively supple. I've cleaned the machine to the point that it doesn't look like it was pulled from a barn.
I've checked the internals as well as the externals. I've cleaned out the junk that might prevent the machine from working as it should. I've checked the functions. If something doesn't work and I haven't fixed it, I've told you it doesn't work.
More broadly, you're paying for somebody who cared for this particular machine rather than stuffing whatever version of it ended up there that day into a listing.
Ultimately, I give a shit.
People are buying my knowledge and my giving a shit.
That doesn't make the $100 typewriter a bad buy. I buy those typewriters all the time. But part of what I am buying at that price is the possibility that something is wrong with it, and the possibility that I'm going to have to figure out what.
So if somebody walked into my shop with $1,000 and said, "I don't know anything about typewriters. I just want a really, really good one," I certainly wouldn't object to the budget. We could have some fun with a grand.
But if you want to spend $1,000, I can send you home with two completely different typing experiences... and you'll still have plenty of cash left to burn a hole in your pocket.
Honestly? I think you'd leave happier that way.
Images: "RoyalQuietDeluxe.JPG" by Texbodemer, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0; "Olivetti Lettera 32 (2).jpg" by mpclemens, licensed CC BY 2.0; "Hermes 3000 typewriter.jpg" by Sommeregger, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0; "Olivetti Valentine typewriter.jpg" by Maksym Kozlenko, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Images via Wikimedia Commons.