The value of the singer sewing machine. How to determine the year of manufacture of a Singer sewing machine. Singer sewing machine serial numbers. Myths and true history of "Singer"
Zinger sewing machine (Singer, Zinger, Singer) – Antique?
If it is an antique, who is ready to buy or sell? Singer sewing machine(Zinger, Singer, Singer)? What antique value is it, how much does it cost, what is the price depending on the year of manufacture, and is there any dependence? What is the difference between Zinger and Singer? Which sewing machines are more valuable, foot-operated or hand-operated? What kind of myths about mysterious shafts and shuttles made of precious metals are floating around the famous brand?
In chapter Antiques– Sales, on antique forums, these questions are regularly asked, reviews and answers are very different. Let's put all the dots in place.
Isaac Merritt Singer - a carouser, a womanizer and a slacker (the biography of a genius is a separate story, I will post the details at my leisure, stay tuned), founded the company “The Singer Manufacturing Company” in the USA. He was forced to take up the improvement of his sewing machine by a debt that he was obliged to repay in 11 days. This is how Singer was born. And he himself always liked to repeat: “For me, an invention is not worth a penny. Pennies are what interests me.”
Talentishche turned out to be the founder of franchises - his cars were produced all over the world. Accordingly, the surname of the designer and owner of the trademark was written in different languages. The surname Singer is spelled in different languages with both an “S” and a “Z”. Option Zinger sewing machine was produced in Germany (a subsidiary of an American company).
This is the answer to the question - is there a difference between Zinger and Singer?
After the collapse of the USSR, these machines were bought en masse by the owners of underground workshops for sewing leather goods, in the style of Italy or Turkey, for simple reasons:
The Singer sewing machine was easy to handle and produced flawless stitching even on very thick leather,
It simply worked without electricity, which made production highly profitable, low-cost and practically incomputable.
This all happened in the 90s, now underground workshops have gone into oblivion, and new generation sewing machines have appeared.
Then, in the early 90s, when everything containing even a drop of precious metals was stolen from everywhere, the Myth of values of Zinger-Singer sewing machines (Zinger-Singer): first on S, then on Z, then with certain numbers. It was said at first that the drive shaft was made of platinum (palladium) to prevent corrosion, then that it was not made, but only covered, that the shuttles in some sewing machines before 1930 were made of platinum, gold and even palladium.
It is enough to know at least a little about the character of a German to laugh heartily at such fantasies.
However, the Internet is literally flooded, and the entrances are regularly full of messages of the following order: “I will buy a Zinger sewing machine (Zinger - Singer - Singer)”, “ready to buy a Singer sewing machine”, “We will urgently buy a Zinger sewing machine”, etc. What's the matter?
And this is just a new type of amazingly played out fraud.
A seemingly harmless advertisement for the purchase of such a sewing machine for very decent money:
“If you want to sell your Zinger sewing machine, look carefully at the name to see if it is called Singer. These are completely different cars. Carefully examine the entire machine with a magnet, excluding, of course, places made of cast iron. Turn the machine over, you will be able to see the white shafts, examine them. The magnet should react weakly or not at all. The lower the reaction, the higher the cost of this machine. The exact cost of the machine can only be found out after spectral analysis of the metal. Zinger machine shafts contain palladium.”
That same shaft, do you think it could be made of palladium?
BUT! Since it is not known exactly until what specific year the shafts were platinum, you will be asked to drill the shaft in two places and send the chips for analysis in a letter, at the same time paying the cost of the reagents (300-500 rubles). You will no longer see your money, and no one will buy a car from you.
There is also a legend that residents of mountainous regions, with the advent of Soviet power, melted their gold into the beds of sewing machines. Assuming that this may be true, we will consider each individual instance even more carefully)))
1890, nothing has changed)))
Are you completely upset? Don't be upset, yours Singer sewing machine still for sale, provided that it is preserved in perfect condition, with a luxurious frame and, ideally, with documents, for 500 rubles for pickup. The cars themselves, as antiques or collectibles, are not interesting, take up a lot of space, do not have much interior decor, and are not at all in demand by collectors. Machines from small batches of rare models are valued a little more and if your sewing machine was produced around the year the Singer company was founded.
An interesting fact: the name “Popovka” comes from the name of the Popov trading house, which was engaged in the distribution and sales of sewing machines in Russia.
Famous Zinger (or Singer) sewing machine- is already a treasure in itself, because it is very reliable and durable, even if it is not an antique, even if neither platinum, nor palladium, nor gold were used in the details of its mechanism. There are no valuable metals in it, you don’t have to spoil it, but you can work on it and earn a living. Again, memory and flight of fancy.
You can make a stunning interior masterpiece from beautiful openwork cast legs-stands! This is what designers use with success, turning the cast-iron bed of a Singer sewing machine into amazing tables, adding glass, wood or mosaic tabletops.
A long time ago, about 10-12 years ago, a very intriguing sensation occurred, quite murky in nature.
The fact is that at one time all the smart and greedy individuals were quite actively looking for a Zinger sewing machine, giving quite considerable sums of up to 6000 [.o.] for it (for comparison, at that time you could buy a 2-room apartment here with these money). The reasons for such frantic, and most importantly, unexpected demand were and remain unknown. All sorts of swindlers, swindlers and scoundrels of all calibers themselves could not really explain anything. At the same time, there were several versions, none of which, of course, could be confirmed in detail. I heard about people who gave away money/apartments/cars on the sly, but were unable to subsequently sell this same machine to those who inflated the hype, under the pretexts “wrong series”, “this is Singer, but we need Zinger”, “they took a lot of machines, so far no money" and so on.
Time passed and I completely forgot about this story. Until the day before yesterday, when, for completely abstract reasons, I came across a discrepancy between the spelling of Zinger and the correct spelling - Singer. The trademark is currently owned by Pfaff, which took over the bankrupt company. Remembering the hype, I tried to find on the Internet, which I didn’t have then, some information about it. I read a lot of interesting things, but never found a clear answer.
What it was - a brilliant PR move by the marketers of a dying company (the company was having a hard time just in those years), some kind of mega scam of the local Benders - I still don’t know. Here are just a few statements from different sources:
"...In 1851 in the USA, industrialist and mechanic Isaac Singer, together with inventor Alain Wilson, improved the Elios Howe sewing machine and organized the Singer company for the production of sewing machines. Subsidiary companies were created in Japan and Europe. In 1900 . I. Singer organized in Russia in Podolsk, first workshops, then a machine-building plant for the production of sewing machines. 1.5-2 million Singer sewing machines were made per year. Before the October Revolution of 1917, more than 5 thousand worked at PMZ . workers..."
"...there is some kind of zinger, but its price is a legend. There are rumors that the presser foot was made of palladium."
“One friend explained to me that only a few selected cars are bought for such bucks, and, as I understand it, even the year of manufacture is not important - until about 1910, in some cars the main shaft was made of PLATINUM. It is very easy to check - they used pure platinum - it's a non-magnetic material, you bring the magnet to the shaft and... if it doesn't stick to it, you have in your hands a machine with a piece of platinum weighing a couple of kilograms inside. Well, estimate 2 kg of platinum, huh?"
“in short, once upon a time there was some kind of purge, and the bourgeoisie (read rich people) melted gold into Singer frames, and then painted it.”
“In one village (in Moldova, it seems) there was a rumor that in those machines with the mark Zinger (and not Singer, as it should be) there is some kind of platinum shaft. And they have such a machine in every house.
So here it is. People have gathered, let's disassemble the experimental machine. It means the man is bringing a magnet to this shaft. I quote further:
- PURE! (With expression)... pause... steel!"
“A batch of sewing machines (about 800 pieces) of the Singer brand came with a small part (28 grams) made of pure platinum...”
A little experience brings order to thoughts: “ZINGER is not worth crazy money. It was a scam on an all-Ukrainian scale when several people began to buy these cars, telling everyone that they contained gold and platinum. There is nothing there. I worked in scrap metal, hundreds of these passed through my hands machines. I personally dismantled about a dozen."
“On the weekend, a sewing machine master came, while he was working, we started talking... He told me about precious metals - from old Singers, with a foot drive. There is a company emblem and letters - made of gold, painted. It seems like there was a batch of these. HZ ", either the owner was afraid, or he wanted to take the gold abroad, but he released the cars. That's where it all started. There's like 4 kilos of gold there."
"1. The German company Singer produced sewing machines for export to America (and some other countries) with the inscription Zinger, so that Americans would read it as “zinger” (Singer - in English Singer). I don’t know how these machines got to Russia.
2. The platinum part is not a fairy tale. Platinum has good wear resistance. Moreover, at the beginning of the 20th century, platinum was not a precious metal and, accordingly, was much cheaper than now (this case is not the only one in history, there are even opposite cases).
To conquer a consumer niche abroad, Singer could supply a platinum part for greater reliability.
3. The shaft weighs approximately 2 kg. Price 1 g = 720 rub. , 2kg = 1,440,000 rubles = $49,000
therefore, the price of this machine (taking into account the costs of producing the machine and selling it) is no less than $40,000 and no more than $50,000
4. Magnet testing is not sufficient to determine platinum! You can check the density with water.
5. A whole series of such machines has been released (these are not the only copies), their numbers are also known for buyers. (There is no lottery)
6. There is one small coincidence in the release of this model: they stopped making the part platinum - at the same time they stopped making the Zinger emblem in the form of a plaque, and began to emboss it on the body or paint it. (No gold plaques!)
7. This boom around Zinger is not only in Russia; it also exists abroad. It’s worth selling a whole car in Europe - there, at least they won’t shoot you for owning it and they’ll give you an honest price for it.”
Attempts have also been made to encourage adventurous citizens to heed the voice of reason with the help of facts:
"Now let’s talk about what real value your old Singer has, and how not to be deceived when selling it. First of all, it is worth keeping in mind that there are several myths about “Zingers” among resellers. The first one is that “zinger” and “singer” are different machines and cost differently. The first person who calls the ad will definitely tell you about this. Like, if the typewriter says “Singer,” then it’s not at all what you need, and it costs a penny. If the inscription on the typewriter says “Zinger”, then this is the real “Zinger”, and it costs more than a thousand dollars. Don't believe it! Isaac Singer's name is spelled Singer in English, and all the cars are called the same. The only reason for the emergence of this myth could be that Russia already had its own “leftist” at the end of the 19th century. It was a sewing machine of the merchant Popov, it was sold under the brand names “Singer”, “Popov’s Spouses”, “Singer and Popov”. But it is much more primitive than a real “zinger” and sews much slower. It is difficult to confuse them.
The second myth, which can be found on the Internet: the price of a machine depends on the content of the precious metal palladium from the platinum group in the working parts of the machine. In order to determine the price of the machine, you will be asked to examine its shafts (lower metal parts) with a magnet. The less “magnetic” it is, the more expensive the machine. They even offer to send chips from the machine shaft for analysis somewhere in Perm. By the way, this particular myth may not be so far from the truth. The Precious Metals Buying Department told us that this method of protecting parts from rust was sometimes used in the past.
This myth has already caused murder. In June 2001, a group of teenagers in Naberezhnye Chelny began hunting for Zingers, having heard that cars of this brand contained precious metals inside. Their victim was an elderly woman who recklessly opened the door of her apartment to an unknown person. She was killed right on her doorstep. The police found out that nothing was missing from the apartment except a sewing machine.
And finally, the third myth. It says that in 1998 the Singer company announced a search for a typewriter from the century before last with a certain number starting with one. This machine must be in Russia, and its owner, as soon as he is found, will be paid a million (!) dollars. Since then, buyers have been especially active in searching the vast expanses of our vast homeland in search of a lucky car. Those who want to know more about this can look for this advertisement themselves - they say it was published in AiF or Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1998. But this myth is also not very similar to the truth, since the Singer company is now in no position to spend so much money on advertising purposes."
"Legend No. 1 "Golden Emblem on Singer"
On sewing machines manufactured by SINGER, they used a patch plate made of copper (1867 approx. - 1879), then they began to use brass, with a varnish coating (more precisely, thermovarnish). It is resistant to oil and if you do not wet it often and do not grab it, it will shine for a long time.
The method of execution is cold stamping.
Pay attention to how the box is made, or at least the table of the sewing machine - it is laminated veneer lumber with a veneer coating.
If you saved even on wood, let me remind you that there is no such saving on cars made in the USSR. Each child of the table and drawer is solid!) then what the hell with the golden emblem.
Legend No. 2 "Smuggling of precious metals on Singer"
Regarding the attempt to export non-ferrous materials abroad by manufacturing gold, platinum, palladium and other parts.
In general, has anyone tried to make a shaft on their own?
At least brass? Let me remind you that it pours easily and will retain its shape well when it cools. Working with brass does not require any special metalworking skills.
So this is a fairy tale. Because the cost of work to manufacture that same shaft, coupled with the cost of precious metals, is not economically feasible. Work at a disadvantage. There are more cost-effective methods of smuggling.
They also say that when the Royal Navy captured the Bluebeard ship, the mast inside turned out to be made of gold. (so how did he sail on THIS)
Legend No. 3 "Palladium (platinum) coating to reduce friction in sliding bushings on Singer"
In the size of the sewing machine, with only 2 shafts and 2 connecting rods, friction was compensated only by lubrication. If anyone, well, at least someone has seen the shafts on the industrial SINGER of 1861, then the lubricant flows all the way through the grooves on the shaft and there is an oil pump. To REDUCE WEAR (a similar tale), they used overheating of the metal in places of high friction, rather than spraying with drag metal. Because the steel shaft momentarily breaks the brass or bronze bushing. The same thing happens with platinum and palladium of approximately the same viscosity.
Legend No. 4 "Silver (platinum, palladium, iridium) anti-corrosion coating on Singer"
The lower shaft and connecting rod on Singers were coated with red lead or silver.
Has anyone ever heard of a silver coin containing silver?"
Well, the final attempt to dot the letter Z in the word Singer:
How can we explain the rush demand for it, which appeared out of nowhere and went nowhere? Let's try to figure it out.
I admit that there are several samples, perhaps even thousands of samples of fake Singer sewing machines with the letter “s” replaced with the letter “z”. Just as I admit that the Singer company itself could in certain years use a different metal for the shaft in the sewing machine. Both of these options allow for the existence of a shaft made of precious metal, be it platinum or palladium. Even if they were in price then, do not forget that people did not have information, the Internet. At least the real sales, at least the real procurement, at least the composition of the material, few people could know, as well as the people or organizations that would purchase these materials. Long live progress! Now every milkmaid (sorry, dear milkmaids) can consider herself a businesswoman, a tamer of prices and space. But even now, with the all-knowing Internet, the education of 11 classes and the heels of corridors, people are trying to determine the composition of a substance using magnets, candles and saliva. What can we say about those, by our standards, cavemen.
I admit that there were isolated cases when a massive cast-iron frame for a sewing machine was smelted from gold, painted black to resemble cast iron, and was taken out of the houses of the rich during the dashing Bolshevik years without hindrance from the Red commissars. On the contrary, the Red Indians, under the leadership of the leader, would be amused by the count sewing his nightcap on Singer, and they would even help him load the machine into the convoy, and not even one - let him wear it. The idea with weights, which Mikhail Panikovsky had his eye on, was not taken out of thin air, but the year was 1930. I admit that already in our time, in a similar way, gold flowed over the hill, and a customs officer jealously observing the state or his own interests twisted the worthless “palladium shaft”.
Sewing machines were produced for many years, at least 70 years, at different factories, in different countries, and the design practically did not change, but the content of one or another metal in the components, including the shaft, could change. Therefore, some shafts are magnetized well, some are magnetized poorly, and some are not magnetized at all, but this has nothing to do with the precious metal, but only with the chemical composition of the steel.
I do not know of a single real case of platinum being discovered in a shaft, although I do not exclude this possibility.
I personally know of actual people who have purchased a Singer, but not a certain numbered Zinger, for $1,000-$3,000, hoping to resell it for up to $30,000. But they bought it, but they couldn’t sell it. According to rumors, some resellers even managed to buy a “Zinger” typewriter, but it was a “Singer” typewriter skillfully or handicraft painted by craftsmen with or without an artistic education.
The surprising thing is that there were people willing to buy a car for 1,000-3,000 US dollars, but there were no people willing to buy a car for 3,000-30,000 US dollars. At least in Russia. It was bad luck, there was a rumor, there were cars, there were addresses, there were buyers, and there were final buyers, but they didn’t work with everyone, or rather, they didn’t buy from anyone, but they were advertising. Despite the fact that every second huckster in Russia bought or almost bought a similar sewing machine, he could not sell it to anyone, either within the country or outside its borders. The resellers did not give more than 3,000 US dollars, and no one could find out about the next resellers, although they were there and were not hiding, but they either rejected the goods - the wrong year, the wrong country, then they assured that it was a fake, then they asked to wait, citing for problems with foreign Customers, there was no money, in short, they were “fed breakfast”, and this was what the entire second echelon of buyers did.
However, abroad, there were several reputable companies that bought such sewing machines with certain numbers. These reputable companies bought sewing machines, very expensively, but not from everyone. Their motto was practically vegetable-based: “We will buy everything, but not from everyone!” From Russia, Singer sewing machines were regularly sent by train to the addresses of these reputable companies. All documents were drawn up in accordance with the laws of both countries, the cost of each Singer machine was different, but ranged from 900,000 to 1,500,000 rubles. Sewing machines were exported as products containing precious metal.
Who needs to pay 1,500,000 rubles for something that actually costs 5,000 rubles? It turned out that no one. Upon arrival at the warehouse of an overseas company, the sewing machines, without being unloaded, were sold for scrap metal at a price of 17 US dollars per piece.
And at the end of the calendar year, a reputable foreign company modestly asked the Russian government to return to it the supposedly paid VAT in the amount of 18% of the transaction amount with the Russian company. There is no need to explain that the money circulated through several Russian companies and again ended up in the accounts of reputable foreign companies, waiting for the next car of diamond-containing or tungsten-enriched Singer, with uranium additives, with a plutonium core.
There were no antiques, precious metals, bank codes, nostalgic companies, breeding of “rabbits” or monkeys. All they did was implement a modified VAT refund scheme, paid out of taxpayers' pockets by idiotic bureaucrats. Well, besides this, there were murders, robberies, robberies, purchases of absolute illiquid goods for crazy money - all this also happened.
In 2002, the bureaucrats finally saw the light and made changes to the law on VAT refunds. And paradoxically (which leads to some thoughts about corruption and collusion), the cost of palladium actually decreased sharply in 2002 from 1000 US dollars per gram to 170 dollars per gram.
The scheme is so psychologically competent, uncompromising, implemented on a Russian scale that the same handwriting becomes visible, the handwriting of the master who carried out the no less intricate, mysterious and ingenious scheme for removing “red mercury” from Russia. But that is another story.
But the need for invention is cunning. The successors of the scheme, small hucksters with the ambitions of toilet paper speculators, offer to carry out for 5-20 US dollars a chemical, biological, molecular, tooth-breaking and other analysis of the shavings from the shaft of your machine, which, frankly speaking, contains nothing. If there is platinum in it, they promise to buy it for... here you can bet any amount that will make you run for a file and a checkbook. There is no need to say that your shavings will be thrown into the trash bin, and in the response letter they will write that there is no platinum, but do not lose hope, last week we bought three cars for ....
The happiness of LOH (Well Educated People) is brighter than the sun. "
And more to her:
"The point was as follows, as you know, there was a sewing machine in almost every home (especially in Jewish families) and it was difficult to come up with a more convenient container for small family valuables. The machine is full of hidden cavities. She does not attract attention to herself (for example, no one will be suspicious of a person moving from apartment to apartment or from city to city and at the same time carefully carrying/carrying his sewing machine, because everyone knows that the thing is necessary on the household and does not tolerate rude treatment). But as the years passed, the owners changed, and the stash in the cars remained unclaimed.
This is where smart people floated a canard, they say there is a series of Singer machines, in the manufacture of the mechanisms of which rare earth metal was used (because, they say, no one needed it then, so the parts were riveted from it). And the people flocked to the buying spree. During the purchase, they accepted the car (for a short time, under the pretext that they needed to check a series of parts), they quickly looked through it for hidden valuables, took out everything that was there, after which they informed the owner that the series of the car was not the same, the parts there were ordinary and the price of the entire car was a ruble and a half. on market day. For show (and to maintain the hype), sometimes they actually bought cars at a high price, but mostly they just inspected them."
You can still find announcements like this on some message boards:
"Tell me what kind of manual machine it is - it looks like a Singer in the photos, but the name is nowhere to be found. Shuttle in the form of a bullet. Under the winding device there is a hammered label with a crown, a reel and the letters G.N., and on the base there is a number without letters 1219780. The shaft at the bottom is not magnetized by the speaker at all."
And at the end, instead of an epilogue, there is a final chord:
"12:43 15/04/2009
MOSCOW, April 15 - RIA Novosti.
An unprecedented excitement arose in Saudi Arabia after rumors appeared about the presence of the mythical substance “red mercury” in old Singer sewing machines, the local publication Saudi Gazette reports, citing representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is believed that a small amount of this substance is worth several million dollars and can be used both in treasure hunting and in the creation of an atomic bomb. According to rumors, a small amount of “red mercury” is supposedly contained in sewing machine needles, and this can be checked using a mobile phone, which supposedly loses its signal if the required substance is present in the Singer.
Rumors about the precious filling of Zingers appeared on the Saudi segment of the Internet a few days ago and spread with great speed throughout the kingdom.
The police believe that they are the fruit of the activities of scammers who decided to take advantage of the situation that has arisen in the kingdom's markets, when the price of one Singer sewing machine reaches 200 thousand riyals (50 thousand dollars).
In some regions of the country, in particular in Al-Qasim and Medina, the police are forced to monitor the operation of markets where spontaneous points of sale of Zingers have appeared, and to monitor adequate price levels.
How eager the Saudis are to become the owners of “red mercury” is evidenced by the incident in the town of Dhulum, where attackers robbed a number of sewing workshops and took away the treasured “Zingers.”
Despite repeated appeals from the Saudi authorities explaining the complete unscientific nature of such an assumption, the boom around Zingers in the country continues."
Everyone remembers the dedication of Vladimir Mayakovsky: “To Comrade Netta, the ship and the man.” In the same way, for the everyday consciousness, the ancient sewing machine and its creator Isaac Singer are “fused” in the name Singer. Moreover, exquisite vintage equipment over time pushed into the background the portrait of the owner of the production.
The highest reliability of all structural components makes it possible, even after more than a century, to produce the perfect stitch, working with any materials - from the finest fabrics to. The owner’s interest in how to determine the year of manufacture of a sewing machine is by no means idle.
To Mr. Singer, sewing machine and businessman
The accuracy and punctuality of the equipment manufacturer will help us when, armed with patience and turning to the help of everyone's modern friend - the Internet, we determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine. You ask how? Very simple! “All moves are written down,” as one well-known literary hero said. Detailed “talmuds” from the black beauties seamstresses were carefully stored in the accounting departments of the Singer company, and then in an abbreviated form they were transferred to the Internet for all curious owners, collectors and hunters of antique sewing equipment.
Of all the accounting registers, only documents dated from 1851 (the year of the first production of the famous machine) to 1870 were inaccessible to analysts. Such meticulous detailing of documents from the past century and a half is a credit to any production! Therefore, let’s say “thank you” to the talented inventor and his successors for the opportunity to satisfy the thirst for knowledge on the question: “How to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine?”
Amazing production volumes
From the information provided, we can find out, for example, that already at the beginning of 1871 the serial number of sewing equipment leaving the assembly line was 611,000, at the beginning of the next year - 914,000, in 1973 - 964,000, and so on. As you can see, the demand for cars was not the same in different periods, and the circulation of their production varied from year to year and was not a constant value.
The millionth Singer was released in 1873, the two millionth copy dates back to the end of 1875, the ten millionth was produced in 1891. 1899, the penultimate year of the century, ended at 16,831,099.
Singer branches
In addition to solving the question: “How to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine?”, you can establish, thanks to the letter marking, the place where this or that mechanism was produced.
The letters M, P correspond to production in Scotland, N - in the American New Jersey (Elizabeth). Since 1904, the B marking has been added to the American plant (a little more than one and a half million sewing machines were produced under it).
Of interest to us are the numbers of Russian-made equipment in Podolsk that appeared in 1906, starting with the letters S, T (since 1908 it was replaced by the letter E, since 1911 - A). In addition to Podolsk, Singer branches existed in the Prussian Witenberg, as well as in (the city of Bridgeport).
It is obvious that, for example, a Singer sewing machine made in 1904 can only be of foreign manufacture, most likely American. The Singer Manufacturing Company (which existed since 1863) was present on the Russian market five years after the abolition of serfdom. The high cost of delivering equipment from overseas prompted the establishment of production in Podolsk thirty-five years later. Construction began in 1900, but initially, from 1902, the plant produced only individual spare parts for family sewing machines.
Doubling letters
In the 1920s, mass production prompted products to be labeled with numbers preceded by a two-letter code. Factories were built in Colombian Bogota, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Quebec Canada, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. The production facilities closest to Russia were located in the German Karsruhe, the Italian city of Monza, the French Bonnieres, Istanbul, and Pakistan.
In the USA, during this period, another plant was opened in South Carolina (Anderson), in addition to traditional production in New Jersey.
The history of the Russian "Singer"
The engineer who built it, Walter Frank Dixon, remained the director of the enterprise built in Podolsk until the revolution of 1917. In 1913, with which it is customary to compare all the successes of Soviet construction, the daily production of sewing machines amounted to 2,500 per day, over 600 thousand per year. The company enjoyed all the preferences of the Supplier of the Court of His Imperial Majesty. Its turnover increased seven times compared to the original; 3,000 branded stores were opened throughout Russia, the total staff of which exceeded 20 thousand people. Products that were not inferior in quality to foreign ones were provided to the domestic buyer in installments. That is why the Singer sewing machine is still found in almost every family.
In the first years of Soviet power, the Podolsk plant produced small consumer goods - cast iron, coal-fired irons, openers and frying pans. Later it was again transformed into the only enterprise in the Union that produced Podolsk sewing machines, and in 1994 it returned to the fold of the Singer company. Production efficiency is supported by cooperation with Semi-Tek.
Myths and true history of "Singer"
The problem of how to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine has not only an altruistic-historical aspect, but also a noticeable “shade of treasure hunting.” There is a myth that individual parts of the mechanism (in particular the shaft) were created by designers from rare valuable metals (palladium and the like).
Possessing such an enviable rarity, apparently of heirloom value, do not trust people who approach it to “examine” it with a magnet in their hands, expecting that the non-iron materials of the sewing machine will not exhibit attractive properties.
Metals other than iron are present mainly in the bed of a limited number of foot-operated sewing machines produced in the mid-30s. Their high molybdenum content makes them a slightly more valuable "scrap metal".
The penchant for sensationalism inherent in a society in a state of turmoil led to the publication in the domestic press of another false information that some serial numbers of Singer sewing machines, lost precisely on the territory of Russia, promise their owners a prize of 1 million dollars. I think there is no point in debunking such children's fables.
The truth is that among the merchants of our pre-revolutionary Fatherland, the idea matured to produce their own, much lower-quality counterfeit goods under the same brand, the speed of operation of which and the reliability of the components left much to be desired. A sign of a genuine Singer is an oval copper plate with the inscription “Tne Singer Manfg Co” placed on the frame. The individual number, which begins with a letter of the Latin alphabet, should be looked for on the board.
It is worth checking the functionality of your sewing machine by calling a specialist to adjust the mechanisms. After all, even the inventor Isaac Singer himself once spent a whole day “struggling” over the first, newly assembled brainchild, trying to get a perfectly straight line. It turned out that the engineer, due to fatigue, simply forgot to adjust the tension of the upper thread. Perhaps bringing your rarity into working order is also worth the minimal effort!
The “terrible” secret of the Singer sewing machine.
Part 3. Saw, Shura, saw. They are golden...
Rumors about the fabulous high cost of antique Zingers are due to myths and legends that can neither be confirmed nor refuted.
You can only check regarding your own machine;)
Legend No. 1. Platinum part (most often the shaft acts as such). Taking into account that the weight of the shaft is about 2 kilograms, the cost of a machine with such a shaft will be around 45 thousand. The storytellers refer to the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century, platinum was not yet considered a precious metal and was worth much less than than now. This metal has good wear resistance, so manufacturers produced a batch of cars with this part, and this batch went abroad. There is even a version that the serial numbers of such units are known, and the risk of buying the “wrong” machine for those in the know is reduced to a minimum. Sometimes in this legend platinum is replaced with palladium. To check, it is recommended to use a magnet. If it is not attracted to the shaft, then the shaft is not cast iron, but from a “suspicious” metal. They also advise you to take a closer look at the Singer emblem plaque. On “platinum” cars this emblem is made in the form of a plaque. On other copies it is stamped on the body or painted.
Legend No. 2. It is said that during the war, the Nazis hid a lot of gold and valuables in a Swiss bank. And the access code and cell details are allegedly stamped on the shaft of a Singer machine. Unfortunately, it is impossible for the owners of the machine to verify this information in any way.
Legend No. 3. During the October Revolution of 1917, the frames of the typewriters were cast in gold and painted black. Thus, the nobles and the bourgeois stratum managed to take gold out of the country, deceiving the vigilant Red commissars. A modified legend says: this is how gold was exported from Nazi Germany (when Hitler came to power, the export of valuable metals was banned from the country). By the way, gold is not magnetic either ;)
Legend No. 4 . “Palladium” machines exist, but they are associated with a scam involving the export of valuable metal from the country by bureaucrats and party leaders in 1992-2002.
Legend No. 5. In fact, the high cost of the machines is associated with scams by officials to return and “launder” VAT. Several “reputable” companies have been created abroad that buy old Singer machines for crazy money. True, they did not buy these cars from everyone. The reason for the refusal to “foreign” sellers was hidden either in the mythical letter “Z”, or in the discrepancy between the serial number and the required one, or in the lack of money at the moment. Such cars were bought from “our own people” without any problems. And at the end of the year, the Russian government paid (read “refunded”) VAT to foreign buyers in the amount of 18% of the purchase amount.
Legend No. 6 . Truly a legend. In Saudi Arabia in 2009, there was a boom in the search for Zingers, their purchase and sale, and even theft, as a rumor spread that the needles of old Zingers contained a terrible substance - red mercury. A needle like this can supposedly cost 2-3 million euros. And red mercury is used either for searching for ancient treasures or for building super-powerful bombs. And it was recommended to check the presence of red mercury in cars using... a mobile phone signal. In the presence of this most valuable substance, the signal should have completely disappeared.
Legend No. 7. More of a scam than a legend. There is an opinion that the rumor about valuable metals in Zingers was started by scammers in order to:
1. Buy cars for little money, spread information about the high value of the units via word of mouth, and sell the devices for a good amount.
2. Buy antiques on the cheap. Under the guise that your machine is “wrong.” But they can buy it. But for a price much lower than previously stated. At the same time, the purchase price of an antique item is imposed much lower than the real market price.
3. Analyze the components and parts of your machine for the presence of precious metals. This event is not cheap. As a result, swindlers receive money for chemical analysis and, again, offer the owner, who is disappointed in the availability of platinum, to buy his antique “junk” for pennies.