Hey there, I signed up for this service just so I could ask you a question about the Royal. I have not figured out yet how to write personal messages on this...

So I recently purchased one (Sprite) off of eBay, because it was local actually and I planned on picking it up in person.. But let's just say the $10 I thought I would score it for turned into $25 after the guy refused TWICE to let me pick it up from him down the street.

Clearly you have a couple of VERY nice machines - the Lettera 33 and your Olympias. Do you think this little Royal is worth keeping, I mean I realize that it's cheap, plastic, light and portable but do you think it holds up at all as a typewriter that you can knock out 5,000 words or more on?

I'm having a bit of buyer's remorse now that I realize that I paid more on the shipping than I did the machine and I could have just gotten an SM9 for about $30 as well. Did I make a dumb decision here? I'm thinking I should have held out and got an Olympia. I only bought it because I thought I was going to get it for $10... I already have an ultra light portable, a Smith Corona Super G which has fast action, but can be a little twitchy. I also have a Royal HH which is amazingly solid, but takes a bit more work to write on. If I'm looking for a "daily driver" per se, something that I can get some serious work on would you say the Lettera 33 or the SM9? And can you briefly describe the difference in the writing action? Sorry for the strange message, but I would appreciate it! Thanks -- Adrian

Hmm. I've actually been quite surprised by my Royal, since it is so plasticky and it's got that carnival-themed color scheme going on. I wouldn't have paid $25 for it, but it's not a bad typewriter, either. There were a couple months, before I got an Olympia ultraportable, where I would hike into the forest preserve and go to it with the Royal. I probably wrote 15,000 words or so no problem, so I wouldn't worry about durability. Despite appearances it's actually a pretty nice typewriter.

For a daily driver, I swear by my SM9, though. If you're always on the run and need something you can carry with you without your arm falling off, the Letttera may be a better choice just because it's so light and it's also got basket-shift, which is rare in such a small machine, but I found the feel of the keys to be kinda unsatisfying. They're light, but it feels like you have to run them all the way to the end - there's not a point where inertia takes over. The SM9, however, is godly even if it is a little bit big. The touch response is superb, the quality is excellent - really, everything that you can do right with a portable typewriter was done right in the SM9. I'd keep an eye out on Ebay and other sites for a while and grab a good one - look for a newer, "De Luxe"-branded model. If you're feeling spendy, you could buy a refurbished model - I think that Blue Moon Camera was selling one recently for around $125 or so.

I think the closest comparison is that the SM9 has a very light, short, crisp keystroke, where the Lettera has a very light, long, and sort of squishy keystroke. I don't really care for the Lettera for long-duration writing sessions, actually.

If you want to get into Olympias, I just wrote (in a fit of delirium, I think) a guide to Olympia portables: [link]

Brilliant, that's just what I was hoping to see - a thorough description on the writing action. I'll check out your write up. It seems as though most "writers" swear by the SM9. I'm thinking I'm just clean out the Sprite and sell it to some hipster on craigslist. I know that I could definitely get my money back.

It's so funny, the guy who I bought it from has my phone number, and was in my neighborhood this morning and left me a message on Ebay telling me to give him a call so we could meet up. A phone call would have been nice,. I clearly didn't get the ebay message until later in the afternoon and missed my chance to literally walk down the street and pick it up! Some people are seriously so strange and paranoid. This guy was "bothered" when I called him the other day to pick it up.

Thanks for the response.

Sounds like a plan, the Sprite looks funky enough that you could probably pass it off on someone for $25-30 on Craigslist or something.

In all honesty, if I could go back to the first typewriter I ever bought, if I'd gotten an SM9 first, I probably wouldn't have wanted to look for anything else. There's a couple big desktops (Olympias, mostly) that feel a tad better, but as far as portables go, I think it's top-of-the line stuff.