https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Soboroff

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

My quick typewriter purchasing crash course: <br /> Most typewriters are solid beasts and can take a serious beating and still work really well. I've got 5 now that I bought for $10-50 and mostly really only needed small tweaks to work perfectly. One has an issue that will require some more heavy work, but having gotten it for $10, it's not really much of an issue. Several of them worked incredibly well right out of the box with no work at all. Occasionally kids will pound on the keys which can cause the linkages to come undone, but a pair of needle nose pliers and some patience to look at the mechanics of what's not working underneath can usually get them repaired without any real work. Beyond this there's a wealth of online videos and help that can get you pretty far without paying for a repair shop. Some are just old and dusty and need a quick cleaning with compressed air and/or a toothbrush.

Ebay can tend to have heavily overinflated prices because a lot of folks think that all typewriters are rare. A very small percentage of some of the oldest are, but generally as a group they're not. If you don't want to fool around with repair issues you can purchase machines from repair shops serviced in full working condition from $75-200, but at least you can expect that they're nearly perfect beyond some small blemishes due to age. Sadly, a lot of places will list broken machines in questionable shape for this much because they see others listing (great machines) for the same amount. Don't fall prey to this. Some of the best places to look for functional machines are donation shops (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc.) as well as yard sales or estate sales. Online sites like Facebook marketplace, https://shopgoodwill.com, or https://offerup.com can have inexpensive listings, but most are listed as untested because most folks don't know how to test them fully and are scared of them, but this is usually where you can find some great deals. You can also ask for typewriters on https://buynothingproject.org/ or a Facebook group for your particular area.

If you're able to test things in person, it can help to have some blank paper or index cards and even a universal ribbon ($5-15, in case the old ribbon is missing or too old and dry to work) with you. Then you can put in paper, try out each key (with/without shift), and all the other buttons, knobs, and switches as well as the margin stops, and the bell. Most folks listing them are well aware they're not actually selling for prices over $50 and will be open for 10-25% discounts off of what they're listing them for. I will mention that I bought one machine as dirt cheap because someone had it on the stencil setting (rather than the usual black or red ribbon settings) and they didn't know that this meant it wouldn't type anything visible. A quick flip of the switch after purchase and I was on my way.

r/typewriters is a wealth of information as are https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/index.html and https://typewriterdatabase.com/. Usually, you can't go too far wrong with one of the most popular models which are generally ranked at https://typewriterdatabase.com/popular.0.typewriter-models.

Good luck!

[[Mark Lawrence Schrad]] in Why the World of Typewriter Collectors Splits Down the Middle When These Machines Come Up for Sale<br /> at 2024-03-16 12:00 PM <br /> (accessed:: 2024-03-19 10:23:08)

Facebook group: Antique Typewriter Collectors https://www.facebook.com/groups/4770669677

Example of a small Weis steel card index which was used by a coin collector who had custom index cards made for tracking a collection.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235342975576/

The flip side of the collector's fallacy....

https://www.napkin.one/

Yet another collection app that belies the work of taking, making, and connecting notes.

Looks pretty and makes a promise, but how does it actually deliver? How much work and curation is involved? What are the outputs at the other end?

An association copy is a copy of a book which belonged to the author or someone connected to them or a copy of a book that once belonged to someone particularly associated with its contents, often annotated.

I've got association copies of some information theory texts...

Just as Warburg's suggestion that an album of collected stamps could help us to understand the world visually if all other images were lost, perhaps subsections of traces of other cultures could do the same.

Typewriter Tips: Budgeting (AKA How to get cheap typewriters!)

• antique malls (look in unconventional places (like luggage))
• estate sales (everything must go)
• yard sales
• auctions
• facebook marketplace (negotiating)

Hunting tips - look for cases, folks they often don't know what's in them or think they're luggage - look under things - negotiate<br /> - bundle items as a group to negotiate<br /> - Tell friends and you'll get an army looking for you

TYPEWRITER TOUR: How I ended up with 17 typewriters (story time)

California Typewriter got Sara into collecting.

She names her typewriters.

She likes the consistency of the Corona Pacemaker, the IBM Selectric II, and the Olympia Electric.

• Smith-Corona Corsair Deluxe Aqua/Blue Travel
• Royal Futura 800

Any book collector worth their salt will already have in mind the way they want their collection arranged. Only someone who wants to use it as wallpaper would have a service arrange it.

I wonder what the other two cases were?

Perhaps the collector's fallacy may turn out to be useful in this broader argument?

David Quammen on Books

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.<br /> —David Quammen (1948 ― ), science, nature, and travel writer in The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder

Syndication link: - https://boffosocko.com/2016/08/03/intellectual-wallpaper/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodge-podge

How is this broadly related to the intellectual history of commonplace books, zettelkasten, and other note taking matters.

I recall an idea of a Hodge-podge book from my youth, but these may have been published children's activity books for fun rather than collecting tidbits as in something closer to a scrapbook.

Link to: - Eminem's stacking ammo - Thought about this randomly while editing notes for [[Forte2022]]

Four broad criteria for collecting notes: - Is it surprising? - Is it useful? - Is it personal? - Does it inspire me?

Forte places these in the exact reverse order, but I would prefer to place them in order of importance to me, based on experience. I don't use the inspiration portion as often, but it may be more valuable for fiction writers, artists, and other creatives.

Spinney, L. (2020). What are COVID archivists keeping for tomorrow’s historians? Nature, 588(7839), 578–580. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03554-0

"I have, in the following little volume, collected a few of these, the Love-Songs of a single province merely, which I either took down in each county of Connacht from the lips of the Irish-speaking peasantry - a class which is disappearing with most alarming rapidity - or extracted from MSS, in my own possession, or from some lent to me, made by different scribes during this century, or which I came upon while examining the piles of modern manuscript Gaelic literature that have found their last resting-place on the shelves of the Royal Irish Academy." (iv)

The way Hyde makes reference to sources is casual and non-specific. It would be difficult for a reader to access his sources. Because we have such little insight, it is important to be alert to potential biases in the collecting and editing process.

If we can identify consistencies among the anthologized songs in terms of their depiction of love and lovers, and/or among songs which are excluded from the anthology, we will have reason to regard the very partial disclosure of sources with suspicion.

As I have already noted, part of Hyde’s project is to bring the reader into contact with language which has an ‘unbounded’ power to excite the Irish Muse. Perhaps part of the way he contrives this encounter is to control the kind of subject matter that will appear to the reader as that which occurs most naturally in the Irish language.