I will be leaving for a two-week vacation in a few days, and all my good intentions to typecast and blog regularly have flown out the window as I obsessively pack and re-pack, weigh and measure luggage, and wonder if I have left anything out. It is unlikely I will be posting again before mid-April, and while I had wanted to leave a more contemplative typecast up for that time, I don't see myself having enough time to conceive and type one before dashing off. Hence, I shall leave you with a run-down of recent typewriter sightings in Basel and Geneva, and hope to come back to more responses to "21 Questions"!
This Hermes Media 3 popped up a few weeks ago - the same day we scored a Valentine for $10, actually. I examined it and it looked great - nice and clean with a techno pica typeface.
The flea market in Basel was surprisingly productive - and sometimes just surprising. Here, a standard-size typewriter of who-knows-what make and model that has been spray-painted gold -- down to the keytops, type slugs, and paper. The seller gave us a demonstration to show it still worked!
Spotted from afar in Petersplatz, Basel - a Valentine waiting to be discovered, offered for $65. I think the seller would have had better luck if he actually displayed the typewriter - we knew what it was, of course, but I'm sure other observers were puzzled.
I was excited to see this Scheidegger Princess-Matic, exactly like the one we have! And not in bad shape, either.
Next to it was this Brother, which is rapidly becoming one of the top five typewriters I see most often in the wild.
Hermes Baby - not just in the top five, but possibly in the top two! So, of course in that sense Basel was predictable...
Ah, this is a bit out of sequence: a bright yellow Adler Tippa spotted in Geneva three weeks ago. So tempted! But the CHF 30 was a bit high for an impulse buy, and there wasn't a special typeface to compel me to fork over that kind of cash.
Basel pulled out all the stops on this one: a beautiful, pristine, Mercedes Prima for only CHF 30. It was with great sadness that I pulled myself away from this one! However, I knew Florian would be bringing me a similar-looking Continental, so I didn't want a duplicate (or almost) quite so soon. Sigh.
Back in Geneva, the ubiquitous Hermes Baby makes another appearance in a local thrift store, for a rather fair price of CHF 10. Good condition, but nothing special.
Oho, so this is what happens when thrift store clerks take a look on the Internet - or maybe they just price by weight? CHF 100 on this (admittedly decent condition, but not that you can tell from my photo) Underwood standard is far too much to ask.
A Basel thrift store near Georg's house seems to have received the same memo - and they're asking CHF 80 for this Olympia Splendid with burgundy keys. I hope this will not be a trend...
Well, that is that for a while. I look forward to returning to a regular schedule after Easter, and in the meantime I will continue to enjoy the trickle of responses to
"21 Questions". So far:
...have all joined in the fun. Will you be next? :)
Happy Easter!
