Good to know. I had googled, and it seems they tend to lose ribbon covers frequently. Many pictures did have only one cover, some had none.  I wonder how this guy would react if I offered him $20 on Craigslist, lol. Hm. Mostly kidding, I don't think I have room for that.

Last edited by Spazmelda (12-5-2015 22:26:29)

Here's an important tidbit for every typewriter collector: How do you turn a $50 typewriter into a $10,000 machine? It's easy, just get someone to add a smudgy signature to its ribbon cover.


If there was ever a case of overevaluation based on someone's personal bias for a specific author, this is it. I'd like to meet the person who thinks that this particular signature is worth $9,950, because I've got a few things that I'd like to sell them too.

Oh, and as for the eBay listing, wouldn't you think that with such an astronimical price they would at least get the model name right? Yeah, it's an Olympia SM7, not a SM9...

Oh, Paul Auster!  My favorite!  Just kidding.  I googled and still really have no idea who he is.

Okay, guys, calm down! For one thing, this is a fake. Paul Auster's tyewriter is an SM9 and is VERY well-documented, as there is a book about it. A painter friend of his was taken with his machine and made a series of pictures of it, which Auster augmented with an essay.

He is an internationally well-known bestselling novelist and essayist, very highly regarded writer, in print in many languages, a very big player in the literary world. With the best will, I doubt there is anyone else on this board who has a public profile like Paul Auster's. This link below is to an Italian blog with a couple of the paintings of his SM9. (I don't have the book, but I do have the essay, which is incuded in his Collected Essays.)
http://resistirse-es-futil.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/la-historia-de-mi-maquina-de-escribir.html

Secondly, another writer you lot may not have heard of is Cormac McCarthy, whose many novels include All the Pretty Horses, & have been made into many films, etc. He wrote most of them on a Lettera 32, which sold at auction on that basis for $254,000. (A friend of his then went out and got him another, much less battered, for $20.)

Harlan Ellison, the sci fi writer, sold his old Remington Rand for an undisclosed sum about which all we know is that it was less than $40,000.

Jack Kerouac's Hermes 3000 - not even the machine on which he wrote his famous books - sold at auction for $22,000.

But the one in the eBay ad above is a FAKE - or at the least someone is allowing buyers to believe it might be the famous machine... But as far as I know, Mr Auster has no plans to sell.

You might like this site, too - though I feel a bit bad for Douglas Adams' machine...
http://flavorwire.com/100718/when-famous-writers-typewriters-go-up-for-auction
 

Last edited by KatLondon (23-5-2015 12:31:40)

Well, it doesn't say it was owned by Paul Auster, in fact it specifically says it wasn't owned by him.  Just signed by him.  I have heard of Cormac McCarthy and his typewriter.  Have not heard of Paul Auster, but I will concede that there are famous authors I've never heard of ;)