1969 Olympia SM9 #3634361

Status: My Collection
Hunter: Paul Seitz (pstype)
Created: 02-25-2019 at 09:32PM
Last Edit: 04-05-2019 at 11:13AM

Description Hunter 5 Photos 1 Like  Find on Ebay #AD  Find on Etsy #AD

Description:

One of my wife's students saw the ad for this pink machine, having heard of my interest in typewriters, and mentioned it. I was sorry about the pink paint but noticed that it had the unusual keyboard of an alternative font machine, so I went to see it, outside in a cold drizzle and, after a very quick test, bought it for $20 because the seller was eager, having had it posted for weeks without much interest as people seemed discouraged by its pinkness. I was hoping for some kind of cursive font but, instead, it has the wonderful Professional Elite No. 41 (Italic) typeface, nicely aligned (as expected for an Olympia). Inspecting it at home, it seems mechanically sound and only as dirty as would be expected. I look forward to cleaning and returning it to its intended color scheme, after which I'll add more photos.

LATER... After cleaning the segment and typebars, lubing the carriage, etc., and checking all the mechanical functions, this machine ended up performing even better than I could have hoped - perfectly, in fact. So it was definitely worth the effort to restore the original color scheme as well as I could. The result is shown in the photo gallery below!

Typeface Specimen:

Photos:

Olympia Professional Elite No. 41 (Italic)

At some point this machine was sold or repaired by a shop in Sweden.

This is the same machine after repainting.

This is the same machine after repainting.

Hunter: Paul Seitz (pstype)

Paul Seitz's Typewriter Galleries [ My Collection ] [ My Sightings ]

Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 234

After too many rapid cross country moves, I realized suddenly that my c. 1964 Hermes 3000 was missing - lost or stolen at some point in a move. I'd bought that machine new from a shop as I entered high school, did all my homework on it, typed all my college research papers and my Master's thesis on it, but gradually used it less and less over the years. Still, the sudden realization that it was gone felt like a really significant loss, which puzzled me. Wondering why I was so moved by the loss of something I hadn't actually used in years, I began to get more and more interested in typewriters and the many layers of stories each seems to accumulate. I started to learn a little - just enough to have a chance to find some good machines that I can afford, as I gradually try to understand the (apparently, important) place of the typewriter in my soul.