1956 Smith-Corona Silent-Super

This was a pretty easy fix, owned by the same person I did the Corona 3 for.  The Silent-Super was the high end version of the Clipper and Silent 5 in the 1950s.  The main two things it featured over the S5 was a keyset tab system, and a pastel color palette.  This machine in particular is their lovely Alpine Blue.  The Silent-Super series came in four other colors: the standard Sapphire Grey, Coral Pink, Sea-foam Green, and Desert Sand.

In the mid-1950s, these machines cost around 129 US dollars, which in today's money (2019) is a whopping $1,209.  Most midsize machines fell in this price range.  A lot of people feel like typewriters have gotten more expensive and the newer machines like the Epoch from Royal are cheaply manufactured garbage.  In part, this is true, but the reasons they are cheap is a little deeper than you might think.  A modern laptop from apple costs about a thousand dollars.  In 1956, a Corona Silent-Super cost about a thousand dollars (inflated).  The Royal Epoch costs around 200.  This is an 800 dollar price gap, which means in order to profit, modern typewriter manufacturers must cut 800 dollars out of production costs.  Nobody is going to pay that much for a typewriter anymore because they aren't as important.  When these machines ran the world, people saved up for them, just as people today saved up for laptops.  At the moment, the world has pretty much produced all the typewriters it needs, they don't really break down when they're taken care of, so the market is not only dead but it's saturated.  There are more typewriters than people who need them, as a result their value has plummeted.  If someone sold this machine for even 800$, that is deemed way too expensive, even though it was originally worth much more.  Modern typewriters are cheap and cheaply made, because that's the only way to do it.  There is no longer a market for a thousand dollar typewriter.

This Machine only needed some cleaning and alignment work.  It typed Elite, and was in all intent, a great working machine.  The feed rollers and feet were like new, though the platen was worn, and there were a few slight spots of finish loss.  Other then that it types like the day it was made, and I had to make sure it stayed that way.  It's a fantastic machine, smooth, light, and responsive.  In most ways identical to any other Smith Corona, just with a few extra bells and whistles.

Bricks help prevent the puddling cleaning chemicals from eating away the feet.

Before

After

Does have a "1" and a "!"