1938 Mercedes Selekta #134982/2

Status: Sightings
Hunter: Zach Hubbird (EmeraldCityTypewriter)
Created: 01-25-2025 at 08:35AM
Last Edit: 01-25-2025 at 09:53AM

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Description:

This typewriter was found in fairly good cosmetic condition, but had a number of mechanical issues (flat feed rollers melted and stuck to platen, mainspring mount missing a screw, drawband poorly replaced with cord type drawband that did not function, typebar rest melted and all typebars firmly glued to resulting mess, one of the platen knob set screws stuck rusted in place -- aming other things). I did my best to rehabilitate it but eventually gave up and donated it to a friend who I think can give it the care it needs, as I felt it was beyond my expertise. There is little info available on how to repair this typewriter.

This typewriter was made in Germany, and in many ways is similar to Underwood design of this era -- but in many ways is different. There were several interesting caveats of this machine, one being the "/2" at the end of the serial number, which from what I understand means it was produced for export. It does not have the standard German keyboard, but rather a few Dutch language keys (notably the "ij") and several seemingly accounting/currency related keys. I noticed that the "q" and "z" slugs were both poorly soldered, which implies they were switched at some point post-production, suggesting it may have had a full German keyboard at some point. The guilder symbol key and the "1/" key tops both appear to be hand drawn or maybe poorly reproduced, likely also modified post-production, and the corresponding slugs show the same poor solder work as the "q" and "z". Also these slugs both seemed to be custom made from joining two halves of other slugs, hence they had a little "valley" between the two characters. The platen seems to be made of cork, the first such I have encountered. The shoddy typeface specimen was obtained by pulling the carriage along manually while typing, and was made with the original ribbon which was rather dry so I apologize for the quality there.

Mechanically this is a very interesting machine. The chrome buttons in the frame in front of the space bar control the margins and/or tabs (I never did fully figure this out). The "Sp" key is the carriage lock, which is a quite elegant mechanism that fully locks the carriage, and is disengaged by the small chrome metal tab on the side of this key. The left and right shift keys ("Um") each seem to operate independently rather than being permanently fixed to each other like every other typewriter I have encountered. The ribbon covers have a "switchblade" style button (small, chrome, just behind and to the outside of the ribbon cover itself). One of these initially had an issue with scraping because it seemed to be riding too low, but adjusting the shell fixed this somewhat since the ribbon cover mechanism is mounted to the inside of the shell. All in all a very unique machine that surely has a long history, definitely among the more rare typewriters I have encountered if not the most rare.

Typeface Specimen:

Photos:

Hunter: Zach Hubbird (EmeraldCityTypewriter)

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Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 33

Collector and maintenance/repair enthusiast, writer of poetry, letters and fiction. Currently have over two dozen machines, has been an interest of mine for years but only became serious about it recently (in 2024). Typewriters have become my primary passion in life, though I still enjoy doing other things from time to time. Typing outdoors is arguably my favorite thing to do. Note that I have only just begun cataloguing my collection here, I am hoping to enter at least one a day but we'll see.