Personally, I blame the low prices on my initiation into typewriter obsession. The sight of a perfectly functional and stunningly beautiful 1948 Royal QDL sitting in a thrift store with a $4.95 price tag on it in 1994 was too mind-blowing for me to resist. Then, once I was aware that it was commonplace, that led to a dozen more at similar price points. It was 2010 before I actually learned anything about their history, but I had a lot of happy years typing on wonderfully cheap machines in blissful ignorance of what I actually had in my collection.