Few hours in the garage with major clean-up and service.

Only issue still needing attention is that the red-ribbon is a bit sticky and sometimes rises up properly and other times only half-way giving letters on paper a 2-tone look.

Everything else works perfectly.

Odd thing...the long Tab bar (or what I thought was a Tab bar) above the numbers-row is just a stationary, "dummy" bar that does not move and has no function.  The Tab key is at the upper left side of the key-board just above the capital-lock key-top.
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Nice Pete! One question since it looks so similar to my recent SKE; are the red keys extra sensitive? If I even barely dawdle (and I mean barely) I will get two periods with mine.  George

Thanks Pete. Noted and something to see if the SKE can be tempered. I have all my fingers on the keys which is not an issue with a manual for me but has been with an electric or even my computer keyboard. Particularly when it gets late, I'm tired and one of the fingers feels the extra pull of gravity.

We didn't get the SGE 62 here in the UK, only the SGE50.  Olympia then launched the SGE60 around 1975 which didn't sell because it was unreliable, and then the SGE65 which was a modified SGE60.  This was also troublesome, and the Olympia dealer that I was working for at the time was paid a small fortune by the manufacturers to modify SGE65s on site that they had sold direct to government offices.  I seem to remember that the carriage return clutch was a big source of trouble.  Dealer resistance to the SGE65 was so high that Olympia had to re-introduce the recently-discontinued SGE50 or lose sales.  The rumour was that Olympia had already sold the tooling for this machine to Optima/Erika in East Germany and therefore had to buy the machines back from behind the Iron Curtain.  Clever old East Germany told them that they would only supply if they took Erika portables as well - hence the sudden appearance of the Olympia Regina (a disguised Erika).  Although old technology, being basically an electrified SG3, the SGE50 was an excellent, reliable machine.  It's only Achillies heel was that the pivot on the plastic shift cam would wear in time, causing the cam to wobble from side to side until it broke completely.  A bit of a pain to change but not impossible by any means.

Here is a reply I received over on the FaceBook group...

"   Regardless of the intent of these machines, some did make it to the general population by a few of the unscrupulous dealers who would purchase some of these with fraudulent school purchase orders. Theses machines cost considerably less for schools which made them profitable to sell to the retail market. Not saying this happened with this one. Just a possibility that would explain the good condition as school machines got really beat up.  "
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