Tapping Typewriter Market

Question: I recently bought my first collectible typewriters at flea markets and am hooked. What hints can you give the fledgling collector?--C.V.

Answer: For the new typewriter collector, there is a free folder put out by Darryl C. Rehr, 11433 Rochester Ave., No. 303, Los Angeles, Calif. 90025, telephone (213) 477-5229. It is called “A Beginner’s Guide to Collectible Typewriters.”

Rehr also is a contact for the Early Typewriters Collectors Assn., which, he says, has about 100 members, mostly in this country. The group’s quarterly, 12-page newsletter, ETCetera, costs $15 annually.

Another way to familiarize yourself with collectible typewriters is to study prominent collections.

The biggest such collection in this country, Rehr said, is in the Milwaukee Public Museum, which has about 800 such machines in its inventory. This is only logical because Milwaukee was the birthplace of the first typewriter--the Sholes & Glidden, invented in 1868 and placed into production five years later by Remington.

“That machine founded the world’s typewriter industry,” Rehr said.

“Typewriters are among the most reasonably priced items for people looking for something new to collect,” according to his folder.

Collectible prices, it says, range from $30 to $75 for the more common typewriters to a middle range of $100 to $300, to four figures for rarer models.

Rehr’s folder lists 10 typewriters worth $1,000 each--in prime condition--if they carry the following brand names: Automatic, Blickensderfer Electric, Fitch, Gardner, Hammonia, Jackson, Malling Hansen, Maskelyne, Sholes & Glidden and Travis.

On a related note, Arcadia publisher Dan Post has just produced a book for the typewriter aficionado. It’s titled, “The Typewriter and the Men Who Made It,” 176 pages ($17.95 plus tax, which includes postage).

Post says the clothbound, illustrated book is an expansion of a 1954 edition by Richard N. Current, a retired history professor. “It’s interesting to any historian and to all typewriter collectors,” he said.

The book can be ordered through Post at P.O. Box 150, Arcadia, Calif. 91006.

Soble cannot answer mail personally but will respond in this column to questions of general interest about collectibles. Do not telephone. Write to Your Collectibles, You section, The Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.