After my note earlier about progress on restoring my 1936 Royal KHM typewriter, a colleague reminded me that a KHM makes an appearance in the Taylor Swift song Fortnight. Then they asked if I was just collecting machines from her videos? While I fully expect to pick up a Royal Ten one day, it’s a total coincidence. She’s obviously got great taste in vintage typing machines.
Wiped off the worst of dust and grime on the exterior of my 1936 Royal KHM standard typewriter. Cleaned up the carriage a bit and did a light oiling. Cleaned out the paper tray and platen area. Spooled up some new ribbon. After a few quick tweaks, this typewriter is now at least minimally usable. This has one of the cleanest and crisp typing actions of any of my machines despite being one of the dirtiest and worst conditioned machines in my fleet. It has a reasonable carriage return speed, but may be one of the fastest typers I’ve got. I can’t wait to see how well it does once it’s had a full COA. The tabulator is going to require some heavy work.
Serial number: 7-139497 (body), 8-178336 (carriage);
Congress Elite No. 84 typeface, 11CPI, 2.3m/m pitch, 46 keys, 92 characters
bichrome+, tabulator, paper injector, line spacing: 1, 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2, 3; spaced typing;
2026-01-31 Acquired at thrift for a very reasonable $70. I was really hoping to get a Modern Elite No. 66 or an Elite No. 8 as my first SG1, but finding this with a Congress Elite No. 84 typeface was a reasonably acceptable alternative, particularly in usable condition.
Initial condition assessment
This 70 year old standard typewriter is in reasonable condition, but will require a full clean/oil/adjust as well as the following repairs:
left shift key broken off and key lever bent
blow out old desiccated foam
5-6 sticky keys; remainder are slower than they ought to be
broken paper support (surprise!)
de-rust some of the internals
replace ribbon and poorly matched spools
recover platen
carriage grinding on return
new feet (old, hard, chipping)
replace foam with new felt
the aligning scales for the Perspex card holders aren’t functioning properly (broken or missing a spring?)
polish keys and spacebar
brights all need attention and polishing
Repairs on 2026-02-02
With some of the quick repairs listed below, I’ve got this machine up to the level of pretty good acceptable daily use condition. It’ll definitely be a serious member of the rotation once the C/O/A is finished. If it had a more standard typeface it might have a shot at replacing my elite Royal KMG.
basic wipe down of dirt, dust, etc.
fixed carriage grinding on return
replaced spools and ribbon with nylon blue/green
blew out old foam as well as other internal dust and cobwebs
basic cleanout of segment to get keys unstuck and working well enough
basic oiling of carriage rails and one or two additional spots
Typesample and Slugs
Olympia SG1 Typewriter Manual
My machine didn’t come with a manual—standard typewriters without protective cases rarely ever do. If you happen to need one for yours, Richard Polt has one in his collection: Olympia SG1 Super De Luxe Operating Instructions
General Comments
As someone who uses a lot of index cards, this seems a spectacular machine. My one immediate issue is that I wish the paper injector went down a few more notches as I have to roll it back up a few lines to get to an acceptable starting line on my index card.
For about 7 years Typewriter Muse has been operating out of a home-like space, but this weekend they opened a lovely brick and mortar location in Riverside, CA in a nice sized business park with plenty of Doris Day parking right out front.
Their Instagram account has been documenting some of the move and set up over the past month, but Bob and the gang have unveiled their new space on Saturday, January 31, 2026.
Bob’s shop is one of the few I’m aware of with a multitude of people (at least six by my count on Saturday) working at any given time. (Most modern shops are one or possibly two person operations.) This means that the cleaning, repairs, oiling, and adjusting can be set up in an assembly line fashion. Machines come into the front of the shop on the left hand side, then move down the left to the rear where they do power washing and platen work in the back room. From there they move back into the main portion of the shop where the segments and internals are cleaned using isopropyl alcohol and long stick q-tips. (This generally means less health and safety issues by not using mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, or other caustic chemicals which require better ventilation.) From there they stage on a long desk before they go to one of two mechanic’s stations where repairs and adjustments are made before being stored for pick up or placed in the “showroom” The overall layout is quite well designed for moving machines in and out of the shop.
Unique for many shops, the front reception space has community room for a handful of small desks and typewriters to accommodate 8-10 people for small classes, demonstrations, or a small type-in. The room has been dedicated to local journalist Dan Bernstein. (If you’re in the So-Cal area and are interested, Bob has kindly offered the writing space for small type-in events.)
I drove out in the late morning from Altadena. As a typewriter enthusiast I naturally chose the apropos 71 S Corona route (California State Route 71 towards Corona) before turning off toward Riverside, which is about an hour from my house near Pasadena.
Who’d have thought the great typewriters were in Riverside and not in Corona?
Bob Marshall and Bryan Mahoney discussing a custom painted Royal P.
Most of us might only be able to recognize his voice, his patient hands, and his preference for lacquer thinner, but all of us are richer in typewriter knowledge because of Duane Jensen’s kind sharing of his craft by way of his spectacularly helpful Phoenix Typewriter YouTube channel.
A bunch of us both watch and provide links to his library of typewriter repair videos on a daily basis. Many of us know how to tear down and build up a typewriter because of his tutorials and years of work. Once you attempt to repair a typewriter for yourself, you’ll realize how skilled he was to be able to simultaneously film his work while he did it. (I swear he had six hands….) He also patiently dispensed (and still asked for his own repair advice) on a regular basis on Facebook.
Thousands of his repaired machines will continue to give people joy every day. He’ll be missed terribly in the typewriter community, but fortunately some of his work and his spirit will continue live on online.
My friend (and prototypical blogger) Catherine gave me her Olympia Monica electric typewriter many years ago. After a flurry of typing initially, it sat fallow for a time. When I returned to use it a few years ago, it suddenly stopped working, due, I found later, a slipped drive belt.
Congratulations on getting this back to life. I’m a big fan of typing on index cards myself.
If you need inexpensive, US-made typewriter ribbon, try Baco Ribbon or Fine Line which can be had for pennies on the dollar (and it’s usually where most shops or re-sellers of ribbon are sourcing theirs). https://boffosocko.com/research/typewriter-collection/#Typewriter%20Ribbon
Most know about the blogosphere, but did you know there is also a small, but growing, typosphere?!?
TIL: Moon+ Reader Pro has RSVP technology hiding in it’s settings! This is going to dramatically help my inspectional reading this year.
I’ve just noticed that Zotero update 7.0.31 added specific fields for Original Place, Original Publisher, and Original Date for books. Even better, the books for which I had defined an “Original-date” in the Extra section automatically sucked in that data and updated my database! Good work development team!
As I’m watching the Golden Globes, it’s painfully obvious that it is missing some important analog representation. In an effort to remedy the error, shall we collect the nominations for Best Typewriter in a Movie or Television Series? (The only requirement for nomination is that the movie or television show was released in the 2025 calendar year. Bonus points if you include a photo of the typewriter from the show with your nomination.)
I’ll start with a first nominee:
The 1930s Juwel 3 from the Netflix series WEDNESDAY.
New typewriter enthusiasts will very often post to Reddit, one of the Facebook typewriter groups or other similar fora, something along the lines of: “I spotted this typewriter at an antique store. Good condition to buy?” and include a picture of some generic typewriter.
It bears mentioning and thoroughly understanding that even an expert typewriter collector or professional repair person can only tell very little of the condition of a typewriter by photos. Does it look generally clean? Are the decals in tact? Does the segment look clean (a vague proxy for the potential condition of the internals)? Is anything obvious missing (knobs, return lever, keys)? Does it look cared for or has it been neglected in a barn for half a century? If it has a case, how beat up, dirty, and water-stained is it?
Most modern typewriters made after 1930 in unknown condition are worth about $5-25 and they peak at about $500 when purchased from a solid repair shop unless some Herculean additional restoration has taken place, they’ve got a rarer typeface, or are inherently actually rare. Hint: unless it’s a pro repair shop or very high end collector with lots of experience, don’t trust anyone saying that a typewriter is “rare”—run the other direction. Run faster if they say it “works, but just needs a new ribbon” as—even at the most expensive—new ribbon is only $15 and their “rare” $600+ machine should have fresh, wet ribbon. The rule of thumb I use is that almost no one online selling a typewriter knows anything about it, including if it actually works. Worse, they’ve probably priced it at professional repair shop prices because they don’t know that in the secondary typewriter market: condition is king.
The least experienced typist will know far more about the condition of a machine by putting their hands on it and trying it out. Does it generally work? Does the carriage move the full length of its travel? Can you set the margins at the extremes and space reliably from one end to another? Does it skip? Is the inside clean or full of decades of dried oil, dust, correction tape, white-out splatter, and eraser crumbs? Does the margin release work? Does it backspace properly? When typing “HHHhhhHHH” are the letters all printed well and on the same baseline?
Presumably a typewriter at an antique store will meet these minimum conditions (though be aware that many don’t as their proprietors have no idea about typewriters other than that if they wait long enough, some sucker will spend $150 on almost anything). They’ve done the work of finding a machine that (barely) works, housing it, and presenting it to the public for sale. This time and effort is worth something to the beginning typewriter enthusiast, but worth much, much less to the longer term practiced collector.
If everything is present and at least generally limping along, you’ve got yourself a $30 typewriter. Most people can spend a few hours watching YouTube videos and then manage to clean and lubricate a typewriter to get it functioning reasonably. You can always learn to do the adjustments from YouTube videos. (Or just take it to a typewriter repair shop and fork over $200-400 to get things squared.)
If you’re getting into collecting, you’ll make some useful mistakes by overpaying in the beginning and those mistakes will teach you a lot.
Maybe you’re a tinkerer and looking for a project? If so, then find the cheapest machine you can get your hands on (maybe a Royal KMM for $9 at thrift) and work your way through a home study course.
Otherwise, if you’re just buying one or two machines to use—by far—the best value you’ll find is to purchase a cleaned, oiled, and well-adjusted machine from a repair shop. Sure it might cost $350-600, but what you’ll save in time, effort, heartache, searching, repair, etc. will more than outweigh the difference. Additionally you’ll have a range of machines to choose from aesthetically and you can test out their feel to find something that works best for you.
Or, you could buy a reasonable machine like the one typically asked about for $40-70 and find out it needs cleaning, oiling, and adjusting and potentially a few repairs. The repair tab might run you an additional $450. Is it worth it when a repair shop would have sold you the same, a very similar, or an even better machine in excellent condition for $350? It also doesn’t take much work to realize the god-send that a properly packaged and shipped typewriter is worth.
Why Context is Queen
Remember in asking about the cost and value/worth of a typewriter, you’re actually attempting to maximize a wide variety of unstated variables including, but not limited to:
upfront price and value,
information about the current state of the market,
information/knowledge about the machine itself, its history, desirability/popularity, and how often it’s encountered in the wild,
information about how to clean it,
information about oiling it,
information about adjusting,
information about repairing it,
cost and availability of tools and repair parts,
and the time involved for both learning and doing all of the above.
The more time you’ve spent learning and doing all of these, the better “deals” you’ll find, but gaining this expertise is going to cost you a few years of life. What is all this “worth” when you just want to type on a machine that actually works as well as it was meant to?
Most of the prognostication you’ll find in online typewriter fora will be generally useless to you because you’re not readily aware of the context and background of the respondents with respect to all of the variables above. Similarly they’re working with no context about you, your situation, where you live, what’s available in your area, your level of typewriter knowledge, your aesthetic, or your budget. You don’t know what you don’t know. At the end of the day, you’re assuredly just as well off to use a bit of your intuition and putting your hands on a machine and trying it out. Then ask: “What is it worth to you?”
If you find yourself asking this question online, but you’re really asking: “Is this $50 typewriter highway robbery?”, the answer is generally: “no”. Alternately if the question is: “Is this $1,000 typewriter really this valuable?”, the vast majority of the time the answer is also probably also “no”.
Someone recently mentioned to me that the small, portable 1,000 index card capacity cardboard box with lid that they use as a zettelkasten felt more like it was for deep storage rather than daily use. Perhaps it’s a result of the fact that this is how most people have been using these cheaper cardboard boxes for the last 30+ years? They said they’d prefer to have a drawer or a box with an attached lid.
It dawns on me that I’ve never mentioned one of the great affordances of many of the older card index cabinets is that they’re designed to be able to completely remove one or more drawers at a time and use at your desk. On an almost daily basis, I pull out at least one drawer from my cabinet and place it on my desk and it allows me to actively work with collections of over 7,000 cards at a time. This means that while the cabinet itself may seem like deep or “cold” storage, it’s really ongoing active storage that I can quickly and easily interact with depending on the range of projects I may be dealing with on a given day. Working on a different project for a bit? Put one drawer away and pull another…
Several of my cabinets have not only pull handles on the front of the drawers, but also have cut-out handles in the rear to be able to easily pull them out and move them around. This feature was also the reason many cabinets also had card rods. The cards could be physically held into the drawers to prevent the user from accidentally tipping the drawer and loosing all the cards into a random pile on the floor. Robert Pirsig describes a sad affair similar to this in his book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (Bantam Books, 1991).
Of course at the end of the day I can quickly slot the drawer right back into the cabinet for that clean desk look. And because today is the one year anniversary of the Eaton Fire, I’ll mention that it’s also pretty easy to pull a few of your favorite drawers out of the filing cabinet for fleeing your home office, evacuating your town, and being able to work for four months remotely. (Just remember to seat belt those drawers into the back seat if you don’t have card rods!)
Bob Marshall and Bryan Mahoney discussing a custom painted Royal P.
Peter Rukavina (ruk.ca)
