Hooligans, thieves, and typewriters.

The $1400 box of Le Croix.

My wife wondered why it looked like the wind had just gotten knocked out of me, as I opened this box of La Croix.

This was an expensive box, I replied.

Ok. How much?

$1400.

Now she looked like she’d taken a blow to the abdomen.

A few months ago, someone purchased a typewriter from me (a 1937 Smith Corona Flat Top). I spent about a week preparing it: it was one of the nicer machines I’d sent out. Perfection.

Then something surprising happened. I got scammed.

Someone blocked the Paypal payment I’d received weeks before. I looked at it and it said that the customer had a complaint. They showed a picture of a beat up old Blue Smith Corona, saying I sent that instead. I’d never seen that machine.

So, sensing it was a scam, I said ‘Ok, send that back. I’ll take that over nothin.’ Plus I assumed that they didn’t have that machine at all. It looked like a photo pulled off of Ebay.

And then a box arrived. An infamous box. I was surprised. It was a box of La Croix soda Lime. Though the weight was different than the weight of the typewriter I’d originally shipped (as I demonstrated in photos and film), and I filmed a video of me opening the box with the label and such, Paypal still decided that he’d won out. Now I normally use Stripe, and I was new to Paypal, so they gave him the benefit of the doubt. Or they’re nefarious and don’t give a damn.

So I lost that machine and materials I’d paid $400 for, plus the $1000 or so he’d paid for it. For a box of La Croix.

Presumably, he got the original machine (which perhaps he sold, plus that $1000 back). I like to imagine that he wrote a timeless masterpiece on it, where he burned through his troublesome ways

No, for wisdom! For timeless lessons.

I whined for a day or so. And then I decided, no! There will always be desperate people, locked in poverty consciousness, willing to take bread out of the mouth of my daughter in order to have a little extra money.

I resolved then to double the Classic Typewriter revenue, so that fraud and things like that could be sloughed off like water. And I did!

I was thinking of posting their name and address here, though I’ll decline for now. Let karma sort that boy out.

I like to imagine that he perhaps sat down with the typewriter to reckon with himself. Somehow, I doubt it.

Keep fiercely to love, even in the face of human desperation. It always wins.

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

classictypewriter.com