Antiques Roadshow

Yesterday, the Dutch version of Antiques Roadshow recorded their program near the village of my parents, in the beautiful castle Huis Bergh in 's Heerenberg.

Huis Bergh, www.renealberts.com

This was my chance to increase the amount of typewriter airplay on Dutch television! So I brought my recently acquired Junior Typewriter.

The weather was extremely nice, and it wasn't a punishment to wait an hour before we could start. Once we were in, we were sent to the table of Fred Kats, who is a specialist in clocks, watches and instruments. He opened the small box, saw the typewriter and...

...well, to be short, he didn't call for the cameras to share this amazing find. ;)
Instead, he got several Breker Auction books from under the table and asked me to help him search for a Junior typewriter auction. After several minutes, he found a Junior, which was sold together with a Perkeo, for 70 euros. That would make 35 euros for each typewriter, approximately. But he admitted he wasn't a typewriter specialist and thought it should be more expensive than that. He liked the little machine, but couldn't tell me more about it than I already knew.

After this, we went to the other tables. One guy brought a spectacular painting of steamboats in the harbor, but the specialist wasn't impressed. It was made by a painter who dedicated his life to this kind of paintings, so a lot of his work had survived. He valued it at "a couple of thousands euros" before he lost interest and started asking around for sugar in his tea.

It was interesting to see how things work behind the scenes. Some specialists are just looking for an  object that would be nice on tv, other specialists are really interested in everything they see and make a show out of every valuation. 

In the end, we were asked to join the public inside for a recording of the valuation of some small silver jewelry that somebody brought. We couldn't resist the opportunity to ask for a picture of us with the presenter, the famous Nelleke van der Krogt (presenting the program for over 10 years now).

And to end with the question that is normally asked after every valuation: what did I pay for the Junior Typewriter? 

75 euro. 

Junior typewriter

This Junior typewriter is one of the five machines that I recently bought from the former Scryption museum. It was made around 1908 and it was the smallest typewriter at the time. It's main competitor was the Blickensderfer 5, which can be seen side by side with the Junior in the video below.

I always imagined the Junior being smaller than it actually is. Only in it's case you can notice the difference in size compared to the Blickensderfer. The main difference is that the Junior is flatter. In the video, I took the machine apart, so you can see what happens when you hit a key.

In 1910, the Junior was replaced by the Bennett. This new machine had a paper table, and the small ink rollers were replaced with a ribbon. It didn't matter much; the Blickensderfer was far more popular and sold over 190.000 machines between 1893 and 1917, while Junior/Bennett didn't sell more than 40.000 machines.