I wasn't sure, ztyper, if what you meant actual values or values then translated to now.  If that were the case, then something that cost a few hundred then would cost a couple of thousand and then some in today's money. 

Uwe wrote:

The key to the question is the criteria that you can only have one standard. So, are you a serious typist? Or someone who just punches a few keys on occasion? If you're a poser, then any standard you like the look of will do; they all type well enough to satisfy someone who only dabbles in typing. However, if you need a real workhorse, one machine that does it all, is feature laden and performs exceptionally well, then you have to be far more discriminating.

I own all of the models that have been mentioned so far in this thread, and I would choose the Olympia SG1. It's the complete package, period. I can't think of another standard that can match it for features (paper injector, quick carriage release, double character spacing, a FIVE position vibrator, paper rest, touch control, a jammed key release, spring-loaded keys, etc.). Of all the standards that I own it's my go-to machine for getting work done. And there's a reason that there's an SG Owners' Club here, and why it's so popular.
 

I have a question:  Just what is considered a serious typist?  I mean, how many pages must one type to mean business when using a typewriter?  In a recent thread, I answered that I type roughly 8 pages a week.  In the 35 to 38 years I've been operating typewriters of various kinds, I should only hope that I am not a poser.
 

I've never used a standard, really, besides the SGs... The SG3 is my real love, being ineffably beautiful as well as useful, and Tyewriterman I am going to send you that feed roller back!! (I also love it because I collected it the day after my uncle died, and brought it back from the dead.) In the meantime, thanks to Spazmelda, I can use the SG1, with two backing pages and a sheet of mylar. I really need to keep on with the rubber rejuvenator...

TypewriterKing, I think a lot of people on here take part in NaNoWriMo so they need to type for hours a day all through November, at the very least. I keep thinking I'll do it but have never managed to get enough prep done in time - but last year, before everything blew up with actual deadlines, I was all set to try it on a combo of a Hermes 3000 and an SM9. And the line lever is now broken on the Hermes, so that's just a new headache.

i think in an average week I might type about 20pp, but it depends what I'm doing/working on... if I'm drafting something I'll do 10pp in a morning.

OK.

1) I lack standing to have an opinion, but
2) When did that stop anybody, and
3) I did type several tens of thousands of words on one machine recently, and
4) that machine was the IBM B...

I know. I just said I ditched the B because of irreconcilable mechanical differences and I am vacillating here more than an Old China Hand in a Shanghai Cat House, but I made an appreciation and decided to type without the carriage cover! Woohoo. I can't understand the mechanical connection so it must be that the machine was getting warm with work and wanted to strip to the waist. I don't need the type scales and I don't need the paper table and I don't need the furshlugginer paper guide because I'm just brainstorming and I can line up the margin by eye. Type the way you want to friend.

I know it's an orange and some do not like them but I only have to please myself, and whatever it is, it is certainly not a computer. It's something yet different and it gives the pleasant impression to the error indifferent user that he can type like a howling banshee. If I got to choose two I would chose this machine and an SG-1 and for most purposes use the Behemoth. If I were forced to choose one I would take the SG-1 on the min regrets principle: I would regret less giving up the cranky electro-mechanical beast and keeping the classic manual than the other way around, even though if I had both I would mostly go to the other. Classic madonna/non-madonna thinking.

That's my choice and I'm sticking with it for the next twenty minutes. Don't try to talk me out of it. Before then.