The Zurich Typewriter Meetup sets up in a converted tram depot on the western edge of the city, a long low-ceilinged hall with the original rails still visible under the polished concrete floor. On the last Saturday in March about sixty collectors from Switzerland, southern Germany, Austria, and northern Italy arrived with typewriters, ribbons, spare parts, catalogues, and the accumulated small news of the previous twelve months. This is a note from the day.

The room

Forty tables in three long rows. Half were trading tables — members with machines to sell or swap — and half were display tables, where collectors had brought representative examples of a theme they wanted to talk about. A demonstration corner near the door had two working machines set up for anyone who wanted to try typing on something they had only ever read about.

Coffee came from a small counter at the back, provided free by the organisers as it always is. Lunch was a shared long table with cold cuts, bread, and pickles. The whole event ran from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon, with the trading tables closing an hour early to let the display collectors talk.

The rare table

The centre display table this year belonged to a Zurich collector named Peter, who had brought three examples of the Hermes Ambassador, a large office machine that Paillard-Bolex built in Yverdon from 1953 to 1968. Ambassadors are not rare exactly, but three in the same room is unusual. Two of them were early production examples with the smaller carriage; the third was a late-1960s wide-carriage version that had spent its working life in a Bern architectural office and had barely been used since. Peter opened its case in front of a small group and lifted it onto the display table, and the smell of old machine oil and case felt rose immediately and everyone stood a little closer.

We took turns typing a paragraph on each of the three. The early machines shared a distinct feel — slightly heavier, slightly slower — while the late wide-carriage example was measurably lighter and quicker under the fingers. This is the kind of comparison that photography and text can only gesture at. Standing at a table typing three examples in five minutes settles the question.

Notable trades

A small selection of what actually changed hands, from what I saw:

• A Groma Kolibri in mint green, complete with case and instruction card, went to a collector from Munich for a figure I was not told but that produced a slow handshake between buyer and seller.
• Two Olivetti Lettera 32 portables in matching red and blue traded together for a modest sum — a collector was building a set for a family gift.
• A set of six Olympia SM7 spare parts (mainspring drum, ribbon vibrator, tabulator rack, and three assorted levers) went for the price of a good dinner.
• An IBM Selectric II in working condition sat on a table all day and did not sell, which surprised nobody. Selectrics are heavy, and no one wanted to carry one home.

The demonstrations

At the demonstration corner, a Zurich mechanic named Simone gave a running clinic on segment cleaning. She had set up a mid-1950s Olympia SM3 with a deliberately sluggish segment and walked visitors through the diagnosis, the solvent choice, and the flush technique. Over the course of the morning she brought the machine from a typebar-sticking mess to a clean, quick action, and the change was visible and audible. About twenty people took photographs of her setup and asked follow-up questions. This is exactly what meetups are for.

At an adjacent table, a Vienna collector named Tomas was demonstrating carbon paper technique on an Underwood standard. Interest was moderate but sustained; several visitors had never actually used carbon paper and left with sample sheets and rough instructions.

Two conversations worth summarising

The first was about pricing. Consensus in the room, and I heard versions of this from at least six different collectors, is that the pandemic-era price surge on desirable portables has softened noticeably in the last twelve months. Hermes 3000s that were routinely selling for the equivalent of six hundred euros in 2023 are now trading at four to four fifty. Royal Quiet De Luxes that had climbed to three hundred are back to two. This is not a crash — it is a return to something closer to the pre-2020 baseline — and the general feeling was that collectors are on the whole relieved rather than concerned.

The second was about the next generation. Two younger collectors, both in their late twenties, ran a small side table selling working portables at deliberately accessible prices, aimed at first-time writers. Their argument, made repeatedly through the day: the hobby needs a supply of affordable working machines for people who type on them, not just collect them, and the older collectors should be selling their second-tier writers rather than warehousing them. The argument landed with the older room. Whether it changes behaviour is another question.

Next year

The 2027 meetup was confirmed for the same weekend in March, same venue, provisionally. Two additional smaller events were announced: a Basel spring gathering in April and a Bern autumn meet in October. Details will circulate through the usual mailing lists. For anyone within a day's travel of Zurich who has not been, the recommendation from every collector I spoke to was the same: come once, bring a machine you are willing to have opinions offered about, and expect to leave with more knowledge than you arrived with.