According to a website that caters for collectors of vintage stuff, my mother’s last typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 35, is worth 40 bucks – but on eBay I saw some specimens go for 100 euro.
Not bad, for an obsolete piece of tech that carries a QZERTY keyboard.
Mine… well, OK, my late mother’s is still in perfect working order. It only needs a new ribbon, that goes for about 8 bucks on Amazon, and no shipping fees with Prime.
And I’ll need to buy one, because on the 4th of August I’ll be using my old Lettera 35 for one of those “cheap stunts” that, I’ve been told, “proper writers” don’t do.
Well, screw them.

On the 4th of August, barring incidents, we’ll be sitting between a bookstore and a Chinese restaurant, in Nizza Monferrato, me and my friend Fabrizio Borgio, a first class mystery writer living like I do in these hills, and we’ll be typing two stories in a single take, and the pages, fresh out of the typewriters, will be hung on a string to dry, and for all the people to see and read. Continue reading →