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Thursday 29 December 2011

Holiday Madness: Typewriter Prices That Make the Mind Boggle

In my (paying) business, they call this time of year "the Silly Season". It's when newspapers are filled up with the sort of material which might not normally make it into print.
It's been a bit of a "Silly Season" in Australia for typewriter sales on eBay, too. Listings have been down (why does eBay Australia fill up its daily emailed update with typewriters for sale in the US? The prices are often very tempting, but the postage of $150 plus is bit of a dampener.)
Generally, prices have continued to rise, but I can't say Australian typewriter buyers have been all that selective.
This old Remington, for example, received one bid at $10:
And this Hermes 2000 didn't sell at a second listing for $45:
Maybe sellers (and buyers) are finally waking up to the waste of money in investing in a Valentine. This one was listed with a starting price of 99 cents and has so far received only one bid (but I'm not holding my breath that sanity will prevail! In fact, I'd even bid for it myself at 99 cents):
Yet the plastic fantastics have otherwise been doing ridiculously well. These relabelled Japanese lightweights sold for $86 and $78 respectively!
(Craftamatic and Pinnock belong to the same "no-brand" category, by the way)
Meanwhile, a nice green-grey Olympia Monica sold for around $320.
Nippo Atlas typewriters are making much more frequent appearances on Australian eBay, but the prices are only going up. This one sold for $118:
There have been a few variations on this theme in the past few months (such as the Orven!?):
While we're at it, can anyone tell me what this is (I've also seen it labelled as a Craftamatic)?
While all this was going on, I managed to win this early Optima Elite for $50 (at the second listing, only bidder!) and this great all-black Underwood Champion for $60. No plastic for me this Christmas!


4 comments:

Dwayne F. said...

Pricing was all over the place on U.S. ebay over the last month. As usual, the best photographed machines yielded the best prices. Some machines got silly expensive and some were random bargains. I was the only bidder on a cheap Rheinmettal.

Many of the glass key machines I took a peek at had apparent "crafters" as bidders. Their bidding records included lots of typewriters with interspersed craft supplies.

Congrats on your new purchases. Those are nice looking machines.

teeritz said...

Yes, I too have noticed some crazy prices on bright plastic models. I had planned to bid on that ten-dollar Remington, but forgot when the listing was ending. Dammit. And I have found that if a seller lists a typewriter as "Funky Industrial Retro", it tends to sell for more than it should. And I'm NO expert. If the typewriter happens to be orange, red, yellow or duck-egg blue, then it fetches an even better price. Madness.

Duffy Moon said...

Gotta admit, I'm a sucker for the brightly colored plastic portables. Excepting, of course, the Valentine.

I can't even begin to guess what goes into the weird price fluctuations on machines in the US.

Adwoa said...

The mystery typewriter (Craftamatic) looks like an Antares Lisa...