As one who has come to miss his long-gone manual typewriters (and an IBM Selectric, sold, as I recall, in 2000), I was interested to read this December 7th story from The New York Times:
The story concerns an auction, taking place December 15th in Dallas, run by the company Heritage Auctions. It is a collection of 33 typewriters, owned by entrepreneur and civic leader (and a former president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners) Steve Soboroff. The collection includes typewriters once owned by Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Temple, Andy Rooney, Philip Roth, Jack London, Truman Capote, Greta Garbo, and Tennessee Williams.
In 2022 Mr. Soboroff donated six typewriters from his collection to the Smithsonian: typewriters of Joe DiMaggio, Maya Angelou, Elia Kazan, Orson Welles, Jerry Siegel (the co-creator of Superman), and John Lennon (who, one notes, died 43 years ago today).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/style/ernest-hemingway-typewriter-auction.ht
Mr. Soboroff assembled much of his collection through auction purchases; some were bought from family members or friends of those who had owned the typewriters. The Times article includes the following:
Typewriters are imperfect little engraving machines, Mr. Soboroff likes to say, requiring more physical interaction than today’s laptops. Some exude a personality, a mechanical soul, like a vintage car or a maestro’s violin. The connection to their original owners adds to the mystique.
“They are really hard to find because some heirs don’t want to give them up,” Mr. Soboroff said. “They’ll sell the clothes, pictures. They won’t sell the typewriter.”
Here is a link to a press release about Mr. Soboroff's collection, on the Heritage Auctions website:
