You guys have inspired me to research my own records regarding pricing and I have found that for over 250 typewriters over the last seven and a half years, the purchase prices as shown in an Excel trend line have been absolutely flat. I didn't separate the prices for standards vs portables but their graphs do not show an appreciable difference either. Northern New England.

I quite agree with SoucekFan regarding the hidden prices that we tend to overlook. In my case, though, I see yard saling as entertainment so I don't attribute gas cost to typewriters. Shipping costs I would assign to the machine but I rarely have anything shipped. If a tax is involved, I assign it. I believe there is a Tom Hanks effect and a hipster effect on online prices and there is an eBay effect on local prices, though this latter is not strong here.
 

Part of the recent accelerated spike is also Tom Hanks. There were people I sold typewriters to recently that specifically spoke of looking into typewriters after seeing one of the recent Tom Hanks interviews. This is also the reason for the massive jump in Smith-Corona prices, especially the Clipper. There is also a seasonal element with people buying typewriters as gifts. I think the growing appeal of typewriters, the Tom Hanks interviews, and the holiday shopping season created a notably sharper spike in the last few months. I think the overall price trend has been rising steadily, but it really jumped recently.

People will probably mark up their prices, both on and offline, because eBay had a lot of high realized listings; and the amount of listings, which had been rising for a while, dropped by about 25% due to demand, though it is slowly being replenished. Over months, unless there is some momentum, after they have been sitting a while, the prices should start dropping a bit; maybe not to years-ago pricing, but maybe August 2017 pricing.

Fleetwing wrote:

Would we all agree, though, that office standard machines seem to go for less? Better-typing and fuller-featured machines than portables, as we all know, but not as cute or compact. So they're less desirable.

​Fully agree, which is partly why I have so many of them. Truth be told, I'd probably only own standards if it wasn't for the amount of space they take up and that they can't be as easily stored as portables (that can be stacked in their travel cases).
 

SoucekFan wrote:

...There is also a seasonal element with people buying typewriters as gifts. ...

Yes, good point. A fellow collector (Valiant - who unfortunately doesn't log in here as often as he used to) tends to wait until the Christmas shopping season to conduct mini purges of machines from his collection, in part because they sell quicker, but also because he can get more for them.

He's a very sensible buyer, and like me will rarely entertain a typewriter that's more than $50; conversely, I know of other collectors in my area (there are many so the competition is very stiff) who don't have any qualms about overspending. I sometimes have to bite my tongue when these guys tell me what they've paid for machines, models that I know could have been bought for a fraction of the cost had they just been more patient. Along those lines there are also the 'wealthy' collectors who amass huge collections of harder-to-find models almost overnight because they can afford to pay whatever the asking price is or they simply outbid the competition if it's something they want.

Christmas brings out the crazies (both sellers AND buyers), although I wouldn't necessarily agree that prices are maintained throughout the year at the seasonal high. I may be new to the scene, but I've spent many years buying & selling all kind of things and have never observed that to be true. Unless, of course, one counts those listings by the deluded, of which there are many.

My own, smallish collection has, thus far, cost me an average of £27.70 ($37.50) per machine, plus an additional average of £7.60 ($10.30) each for carriage, fuel & sundry other expenses. This doesn't include a couple of donor / parts machines which haven't cost a single penny. The highest, individual amount I've paid to date, was £57 for a '61 Rheinmetall KsT.