Riverside Antiquing and Type-in with Anna S.

I've been meaning to go typewriter hunting at the antique shops in Riverside, CA again. I haven't been since I last met up Anna S. of A Machine for the End of the World back in 2012 and for some reason or other, i don't ever thing i posted about that.

We finally met up again this past Tuesday. We went antiquing at several shops and pretty much saw at least one typewriter at every stop. Here's what we saw:

Remington Portable for $35. After Anna got the typebars to lift, it actually typed, no top half of the case though.

cleaned up by a typewriter guy, said the shop owner. $125. Not a bad deal since it was in pretty good shape.

Good luck selling this for $70 saying it needs its "return repaired"... it might happen but it might take a while also

$279 - it wont find a home other than the antique shop

30% off of $139 on this Vision 2000 typewriter

$29.95

blurry pic of late 50s or early 60s Underwood... cant remember the price.

Rusted Underwood 5

Underwood 11 for $110

Another Underwood 11, no price 

I think this was $85

Skyriter for $39

Royal Saturn... cant remember the price

Art that freaked me the F out. Artist apparently was a female and this might be her male muse. Disturbing.

Royal Safari $59

This was a Remington Noiseless but my other pic was too blurry. Anna said that this one was truly noiseless

Birdcage mansion... they wanted $750

Sears Correct-O-Sphere?? Why the "Sphere"? See below

Anna pointed out the golf ball shaped typing element

After our antiquing we got some lunch and then typed-in at the attached restaurant:

I ended up bringing the Orange Underwood Portable I acquired Monday and she brought her Royal QDL. I also brought my SM9 which stayed in the car and my L33 which we didn't get to.

I'm sure Anna will write about anything i forgot and even have pics I don't have.

Antiquing and a New Typewriter: Underwood Portable. In Orange???

This past monday, I felt adventurous. The night before I had made a good off eBay deal to get a new Underwood typewriter but I didn't need to meet the lady until later in the afternoon so I had a couple hours to spare. I decided to check out some antique shops in nearby Long Beach. Here's what i saw:

only $15 for this useless machine?

This one was somewhat interesting. No price but it seemed that the dealer was willing to bargain. German layout Remington. It worked and if i didn't have so many machines already, I would have been tempted

This other 3 story shop I went to had nothing but 

I then found Urban Americana which is the best laid out antique ship/mall I've yet to see. It was high end but lots of typewriters inside:

There's an Underwood portable out there without its case

I saw that this was missing some linkages in the typebasket but the machine seemed to work fine without them

chupacabra

I made a deal with a lady who was selling an Underwood Portable. Based on the pictures, I thought it was red. I drove to Seal Beach's Leisure World to pick up the typewriter.

I gave her the $35 which i had bargained down from $45. I asked if she knew any of the backstory on it and she said that it belonged to a man who used to live in Leisure World. I asked, "used to?" Her face changed to somber for a couple seconds and almost like an admission of guilt, she said the gentleman had died recently and he was a hoarder and they discovered 6 typewriters in his house. I'm not sure how it works inside Leisure World but i'm guessing that there were no heirs or if there were they didn't want the machines. And after that, does it go to auction to the residents of Leisure World? or is it a free-for-all, first come first serve? No idea.

 I got back to the car and opened the case and the machine is orange!!!

sanitized the hell and death out of it

Warranty says 1931 but SN 454120 is 1929
I was wondering if Orange was its original color or if it had been painted. Quick search confirms that these orange ones did truly come out of the factory like this. Thanks to Robert Messenger again - his post here.

Underwood Portable gets it done