yes, that's fine - thanks!

Due to a schedule conflict with the Royal 10 seller, my first typewriter ended up being an excellent condition 1938 Remington (Monarch) Portable #5 Streamline w/ Touch Control.  The outside had already been cleaned and about 60 q-tips later the insides are looking much better now too.  The only repair it needed was to replace the carriage drawstring which I did successfully.

Today, I finally managed to find a way to meet with the Royal 10 owner and picked up that machine too.  It's going to need quite a bit more cleaning but seems to be in mostly good shape.  The space bar is broken in half and someone has already reglued it - if anyone out there has a spare space bar from a parts machine let me know.  The carriage slides freely but doesn't move when you type so I expect another drawstring replacement will be needed.  On the positive side it seems to be in overall pretty decent condition for the age and I got lucky - the machine still has three of its manual tab stops (as far as I can tell they came with six originally?) so I won't need to try to mock up replacements after all.  I've dated it by serial number to 1927.  Platen is soft enough but the feet are hard as rocks.

Yeah, it's probably tricky to know which budget models used cost-cutting measures and which merely omitted certain mechanisms from the higher end machines.  I don't know that fewer features on a 30's model is a big deal.  If you want more gadgets you're probably better off getting machine that's a few decades newer.

So I've got an appointment to go see the Royal 10 this Saturday and I've preemptively gone ahead and ordered a new ribbon/spools for it to arrive Monday since it doesn't have one at all currently.

Speaking of tabulators...  From what I can tell, it's pretty common for a Royal 10/KHM/KMM/etc... to be missing most or all of its tab stops.  Is there anywhere that sells replacements, whether original or just reproduction "functional" ones?  I may get lucky and it's still got some, but just thinking ahead here.

Uwe:  You have a good point there.  I'm still trying to get a list of what machine(s) she has, but it would surely be useful to get a little experience to gain a better sense of what I like.  I should mention that while this will be my first time owning a vintage typewriter, I actually have used a typewriter before.  Our family had one when I was growing up and I took a typing class in High School back around 1986 or so.  Also, even if I don't act on it until later I'd still like time to do my research beforehand on my "short list".

mre12ax7:  I agree that this looks like one of the hotter finds.  I've had no trouble locating multiple KMM's for instance leading me to believe that I can get one later on without much trouble. 10's appear more rare and should be followed up on.

And by way of an update, the Olympia SM9 is sold now since this morning.  A reminder not to tarry too long but to seize the moment?  I'm going to call the Royal 10 seller and see what more I can find out about that particular machine.  However, I will also try not to go too overboard until after Thanksgiving.

One more update about the Underwoods...  Apparently the Leader may have been a budget model, so it may or may not be superior to the older Underwood Portable which I'm still trying to pin down and get a price for.  This is taken from http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2011/11/underwood-portable-typewriters-1919_22.html

"In 1949, another model was added to this line, the Leader, which was a much more basic version of the Universal-Champion."

However, the Leader I'm looking at is an earlier model so I'm not 100% sure this still applies.

I did try Craigslist as well, most of the machines there seemed overpriced though.

I've started a new thread with links to most of the typewriters I'm looking at, perhaps someone can tell from the picture a more specific model/year range for the Underwood Portable.

http://typewriter.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=2412