Supply and Demand

By Gordon Hopkins Okay, class, settle down.This is Economics 101 and we are going to start with the basics. Today, our subject is supply and demand. The bottom line is this: when demand exceeds supply, prices go up. Simple, right?Let me give you an example.Until a few years ago, you could buy an old typewriter you found at a garage sale or thrift shop for next to nothing. A typewriter might even have cost you nothing at all if granddad was cleaning out the garage and found that old Smith-Corona that hadn't been touched in 30 years.The reason that no one was buying typewriters is that they had been supplanted by computers. Typewriters were outdated and obsolete.Then, seemingly overnight, seemingly simultaneously, a bunch of weirdos thought to themselves, “hey, instead of collecting Beanie Babies or porcelain figurines of cats, why don't we collect vintage typewriters?”So if you have a product that no one wants anymore because it is outdated and obsolete, slap the label, “vintage,” on it and watch the “collectors” come running, wallets wide open.In economics, this is known as re-branding.Now, over the decades, millions of typewriters were manufactured. Unlike a lot of other things made 25 or 50 or 75 years ago, many typewriters have actually held up pretty well, assuming they weren't terribly abused over the years. Still, there is a limited number of typewriters in the world. It may come as a surprise to you (it certainly did to me), but typewriters are actually still being manufactured, albeit in small numbers and nowhere near the quality of the great machines like the Olympias and the Underwoods.Of course, nobody is making “vintage” typewriters anymore. No one is making “vintage” anything anymore. That's kinda what “vintage” means.”If you type “What is the best typewriter” in Google, the answer you get is the Hermes 3000.I did not write this column on a Hermes 3000. The reason is that I do not own and will likely never own a Hermes 3000 because they are so dang expensive.For collectors of archaic typing machines, the Hermes 3000 is the Holy Grail, the ne plus ultra of typewriters.This much-coveted contraption was manufactured in Switzerland by Paillard-Bolex. First introduced in 1958, it was so popular that they were still being made well into the eighties, although a number of design changes make the later ones less desirable.What collectors really want are the ones from the mid-1960s, with the weird, rounded top and painted in what the manufacturer called “sea-foam green,” a sort of minty green. The keys actually look rather like mints.Why is this particular machine so desirable? Is it really the best ever made? I don't know. I've never even touched one and probably never will. I do know that when the great novelist Larry McMurtry (“Horseman, Pass By,” 1962; “The Last Picture Show,” 1966; “Terms of Endearment,” 1975; “Lonesome Dove,” 1985) received the 2006 Golden Globe for his screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain,” he said in his acceptance speech, “Most heartfelt, I thank my typewriter. My typewriter is a Hermes 3000, surely one of the noblest instruments of European genius. It has kept me for thirty years out of the dry embrace of the computer.”The price of every existing Hermes 3000 quadrupled that day, and continues to go up.Of course, it doesn't help that Sylvia Plath wrote her only novel, “The Bell Jar” in 1963 on a Hermes 3000. Once that bit of trivia was known, every teenage girl had to have one.I did not write this column on a Hermes 3000. Instead, I wrote it on its predecessor, a 1951 Hermes 2000. I don't know how it compares to its more famous cousin but I will say that my Hermes 2000 works well and still types a fine, clean line after more than 70 years. That's really all I ask.So that is why the price of typewriters keeps going up. Next week, I'll explain why investing in “designer cheeses” is not a sound retirement plan.

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