1969 Olivetti Valentine S #5680919
Status: My Collection
Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)
Created: 04-05-2023 at 01:47PM
Last Edit: 04-05-2023 at 01:57PM
Description:
In very good shape. The type is one of those un-American pitches, about 11½ characters per inch. (I look in vain for the ½ key on my computer keyboard. Where did it go?)
I saw this in a thrift store for $500 and thought it was awfully pricey. Certainly more than I was going to pay.
Then I noticed the decimal point. I had misread the price by a factor of 100.
So here is the five-buck Valentine—although, to be fair, with tax it was $5.35.
Typeface Specimen:
Photos:
Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)
Christopher Bailey's Typewriter Galleries [ My Collection ] [ My Sightings ]
Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 844
I’m a writer who often writes with a typewriter to get away from the computer for a while. I think I became a typewriter collector when I bought my typewriters some industrial-grade wheeled steel shelving from a restaurant supply house. Before that I was just an accumulator, but now I’ve spent more on shelves than on all the typewriters put together. (They were all cheap.)
I have steel pens, too, which I also write with regularly. Both collections started at the same moment in 1990, at the liquidation of the head offices of the old G. C. Murphy five-and-dime chain, where I bought a Woodstock typewriter, two gross of Esterbrook Jackson Stub pens, and three bottles of Carter’s green ink.
RESEARCH NOTE: When researching the Olivetti Valentine S on a computer with lots of screen real estate, you may find that launching the Olivetti Serial Number page and the Olivetti Valentine S By Model/Year/Serial page in new browser windows can give you interesting perspectives on changes throughout the model series.