I bought this one from an antique dealer in Jena, Germany in 2016. It’s in perfect condition and has lovely glass keys. Unfortunately, a lot of jewelry makers cut up these old machines for the keys, so it is rare to find them in tact and working.

A desktop Adler typewriter from the 1930s. This belonged to a business in Freiburg, Germany. The story behind buying this typewriter is interesting. I was at a flea market in Kollnau, a small town in the Black Forest in the fall of 2014. I bought a typewriter from a local resident who understood that I collected them. He drove home and raided his basement to sell me his grandfather’s old typewriter, which had been sitting in storage for over 40 years. Unfortunately, this typewriter is super heavy and when I tried to send it back to the United States by post it was damaged. It no longer works because of damage to the carriage return, but someday I am going to get it fixed.

This wonderful little portable machine was a gift for my 44th birthday and kicked off my typewriter collection in 2014.

I anthropomorphized this typewriter in my essay “A Tale of Two Typewriters” in 2017’s Red Hangover: Legacies of 20th Century Communism

I bought this typewriter in Jena. The VEB stands for “People Owned Enterprise.” It has a lovely QWERTZ keyboard with glass keys and is excellent condition.

Bought at the Plain Palais flea market in Geneva.

Made in the USA for export to the German market. I bought this machine, not in the greatest of shape, in an antique shop in Montmartre, Paris in October 2021. It’s a machine from the 1930s.

The best typewriter for writing for a long time.

Bought in former West Germany in 2014. I love these machines. I actually have 3 of this model in three different colors. These are the tanks of the manual typewriter.

I bought this beauty in Sofia, Bulgaria at the flea market in front of Alexander Nevski cathedral. It’s in perfect condition and was made by the Plovdiv Typewriter Works (the Bulgarians bought the tooling from the German Princess model).

I bought this little lightweight machine at the Plain Palais flea market in Geneva.

This is a gorgeous machine in mint condition. I bought it from its previous owner in Freiburg, Germany in the summer of 2022. This one came home with me in my checked luggage and survived in tact. A very rare find.

I bought this cheap plastic Olivetti at a flea market in Geneva so my daughter, who was 14 at the time, would have a typewriter of her own to play with (so she would leave my nicer ones alone!)

I bought this little beauty in Dunedin, New Zealand in 2015 and actually backpacked around Australia with it for 3 weeks. A very sturdy portable model.

I bought this machine from an antique store in Athens, Greece in December of 2021. The machine was manufactured in Yugoslavia under license from Olympia typewriters in Germany. I bought the machine just as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was spreading throughout Europe, and so I figured I needed a typewriter with some Greek letters on it.

This was the first typewriter I bought in Germany in 2014 because I had to leave my Smith-Corona Skyriter at home. It was a good machine until my daughter dropped it from the kitchen table, and it was never really the same afterwards.

I bought this one in Germany, but one of my daughter’s friends broke it when they were playing with them at my house. Teenagers and typewriters don’t mix!

This typewriter belonged to my ex-mother-in-law in Bulgaria and she gifted it to me after many years of service.

I bought this beauty at the Weissensee flea market in the former East Berlin in the summer of 2019. Excellent condition and very portable.

I bought this machine from its previous owner at a flea market in Reykjavik, Iceland. This was the typewriter she used to carry back and forth to primary school when she was a child and the lady bug sticker was hers. I was fascinated by this machine because it shows how the products of communist countries did actually sometimes find markets in the West.

I bought this one at an antique store near Upper Saranac Lake in New York in the summer of 2020. A pandemic typewriter.

This was the first typewriter I bought in Pennsylvania as a housewarming present to myself. Very heavy and elegant.

This gorgeous QWERTY with glass keys was a going away present from my friends Susan Faludi and Russ Rymer when I moved from Maine to Pennsylvania.

I was walking through the Weissensee flea market with a newly purchased Olympia de Luxe and a woman saw me and chased me down. She offered me this typewriter for 2 euro just so I would take it off of her hands. How could I refuse?

This Triumph QWERTZ with glass keys was in excellent condition when I bought it at a flea market in Freiburg, Germany in the summer of 2022. Unfortunately, I didn’t have room in my luggage (because I had two other typewriters!) so I sent it to the U.S.A. through the post. Even though I took great pains to wrap it very well, it arrived badly damaged and now sits in my office as a broken machine. Typewriters are so sensitive.

I don’t usually buy American typewriters, but one summer I went to a big flea market just north of Bath, Maine, and found three typewriters all priced under $20.

I think I paid only $15 for this one, which is a nice sturdy model. Flea markets in Maine are so much fun to poke around.

Another manual QWERTY that I picked up at a flea market in Maine.

This is a Japanese typewriter with a German QWERTZ keyboard in a vibrant red. Very compact and light, I actually could carry this one around in my purse. Bought at a flea market in Freiburg, Germany in the summer of 2022.