{"id":17801,"date":"2025-02-21T09:11:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=17801"},"modified":"2025-02-21T09:11:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:11:48","slug":"hunt-for-the-olde-english-selectric-typewriter-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2025\/02\/hunt-for-the-olde-english-selectric-typewriter-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunt for the Olde English Selectric Typewriter Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I was on a typewriter forum (Facebook group? Reddit? I don&#8217;t remember!) and someone was showing off a typewriter they had that had an &#8220;Olde English&#8221; font. It was stunning! The suspicion was that it was owned by a church or similar that wanted to type that kind of style. In the comment, someone happened to mention that it wasn&#8217;t as cool, but that they had a typewriter ball for their Selectric. Oooh. I want one.<\/p>\n<p>The hunt was on for an Olde English Selectric II typewriter ball!<\/p>\n<p>I scoured eBay and found one, for the Selectric III. I wasn&#8217;t paying enough attention, and discovered only after it arrived in the mail that the Selectric III and Selectric I\/II balls are not the same. I was pretty mopey about this because it turns out that it&#8217;s actually tricky to find the Olde English type ball for the Selectric I\/II.<\/p>\n<p>But how could I be sure it was the right one at a glance on a listing? Thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/typewriters\/comments\/vr0zrr\/selectric_2_vs_3\/\">this reddit post<\/a> I learned that the Selectric III balls tend to have yellow lettering, whereas the I\/II balls have white. Indeed, that was the case for mine!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/selectric_iii_olde_english.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/selectric_iii_olde_english_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Upon seeing my disappointment, MJ suggested getting a whole Selectric III typewriter, which I briefly considered, but decided against, though I definitely appreciate the spousal support in my space-consuming hobby! Instead, I set up an eBay alert for Olde English Selectric to see if I could snag one.<\/p>\n<p>It took a couple weeks, but I found one! It was sold as a set of five balls, some of which I already have, but for $80 I could have it delivered. Sold.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/quintet_of_selectric_balls.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/quintet_of_selectric_balls_sm.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/selectric_ii_olde_english.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/selectric_ii_olde_english_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>And so, it was the moment of truth! How beautiful will this type be?<\/p>\n<p>So beautiful. I went with a quote from Nosferatu.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/olde_english_types_nosferatu_flowers_quote.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/olde_english_types_nosferatu_flowers_quote_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>But I wasn&#8217;t done! While searching for this type ball, I discovered this paperweight: a Selectric ball in Lucite from 1961 that says &#8220;Advocate&#8221;. Well, that had to come home to me. And so it did.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/selectric_ball_advocate.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/022025\/selectric_ball_advocate_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Now keep me away from eBay for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I was on a typewriter forum (Facebook group? Reddit? I don&#8217;t remember!) and someone was showing off a typewriter they had that had an &#8220;Olde English&#8221; font. It was stunning! The suspicion was that it was owned by a church or similar that wanted to type that kind of style. In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-typewriter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17801"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17807,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17801\/revisions\/17807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}