How To Buy a Vintage Typewriter

I sniff paper. It smells good. I like looking at type thwhacked into paper too, because, unlike the waste you get from a printer, the letters are depressed into the page. Typewriters mean it. So what do you do if you like messing around with paper that has letters thwhacked into it?

Buy a typewriter, you popinjay!

…sorry about calling you a popinjay just then. I’m sure you’re nice. I’m frustrated, and when I get frustrated I lash out.

To be truthful, I’m retroactively frustrated. You see, when I first began my search for a typewriter, I turned to the Internet, and the Internet let me down. I found lots of information on specific models of typewriters, lots of information on typewriter companies. But no one would tell me which one I should buy. Buttnecks, the lot.

I guess typewriter collectors are naturally inclusive. They don’t want to say which machine is best because that would mean they didn’t need to collect any more. Kind of like how parents are loathe to name their favorite child, even though it’s me.

I won’t jack you around like that. You should buy a Hermes 3000. The curvy one. It will look like this:

There’s also a later Hermes 3000 that’s quite boxy. Ignore it. Scoff at anyone who owns one. Boxy? What are you, a robot?

Why should I buy a Hermes 3000?

Because go fornicate yourself. That’s why. (Sorry.) Also, they’re the best. They look the best. They work the best. The typing is the best. They hardly ever break. They use easily-obtainable ribbons you can get at any office supply place. And they’re the color of the sea after a storm if you live in a sea of paint left un-bought in a paint store around 1972.

Don’t argue with me until you’ve bought one and used it. Then you can still argue with me, but we’ll both know two things:

1. I’m right
2. You’re a fraud

Don’t Get a Royal Quiet DeLuxe

Lots of people will tell you to get a Royal of some variety, e.g. a Quiet DeLuxe. Those people are buffoons. Literally buffoons who have managed to overcome a human, robbed that human of his or her skin, and then sallied forth upon the face of the Earth distributing erroneous buffoonery about typewriters.

I bought a Royal Quiet DeLuxe — for way too much money, I might add — from a pimp off Craigslist and the transaction was only partially as awkward as having to use the thing.

How To Buy Your Hermes 3000

The number one problem you will have with buying a vintage typewriter is the people who currently own them. What usually happens is a family member keels over and Junior finds a vintage typewriter upstairs. Without knowing tiddleydicks about typewriters, he lists it on eBay or Craigslist for $200.

The worst part is someone will probably come along and pay that. No. Don’t be that someone. No!

Go to this link: http://www.shopgoodwill.com/. Sign up for an account. Then set up something called a “personal shopper.” The page will look like this:

Tell it to search for “typewriter.” Don’t search for Hermes 3000. The people entering these items into the database don’t give two dingles what the actual name of the typewriter is. They’re just gonna put “typewriter.” Besides, if you search for Hermes 3000, you’ll be searching alongside all the other dorks just like you who are hoping to own the best vintage typewriter ever made.

What you want is a Hermes 3000 that is in the hands of a Goodwill shop owner who doesn’t know or care at all that it is a Hermes 3000. They only care that it sells. And they’ll probably take $20 for it.

Make Software Do Your Bidding

Tell the software to email you whenever it finds a match. Yeah, that means you’re going to get a lot of emails mostly full of junk. And you’ll have to pay to get the machine shipped to you. But it’s a lot better than dealing with eBay sellers. Ebay sellers will:

1. Figure out that they have a Hermes 3000
2. Search for it on Google
3. Find this page
4. Mark it $200

And that’s a little better than Craigslist sellers who will:

1. Be flaky as hell about meeting up
2. Probably murder you
3. Make you take time out of your life to meet them somewhere convenient for them, henceforth to be known as “the murder scene”

Honorable Mentions

In the interest of honesty, I should probably tell you that I gave away my Hermes 3000 as a prize in a poetry contest. The winning poem was absolutely superb, titled “Chuck Norris Masturbates Just Like You and Me.” I did that because I discovered in the process of collecting typewriters that I like pre-WWII portable typewriters, and the 3000 didn’t begin production until 1958. Also because I wanted to encourage people to write some totally amazing poetry, which, as you know from reading the title above, they did.

Along the collecting way, I found other similar models I liked, particularly the Olympia SM9 DeLuxe, which is a reasonable simulacrum of a 3000. But then I got my hands on a Remington Rand #5 from the 1930’s and it changed my typewriter collecting life.

But that’s neither here nor there. Because we’re talking about you right now, and you are buying a Hermes 3000. The curvy model, or else you’re a buffoon.