My New Toy!

Well, I've searched high and low for many, many years for a 1959 - 221K Featherweight produced by Singer Company.  Why does 1959 have significance?  Well, you're supposed to buy a featherweight from the year you were born and lucky, me, 1959 was the most difficult year to ever buy one!  There were only 1,500 of these machines made in 1959.  Here is the dating calendar of machines made in 1959.  This is also the last of the regular Singers before the "Red S" models came out.  Later in 1959, Singer came out with a 222K which has a removable plate for shirt sleeves but the traditional featherweight doesn't have that making the 221K extremely rare and very valuable.  My 222K is a Red S - another more rare Singer machine.  Also, the case of this machine seems to be in very nice shape as well.

I originally found out that a 1959 Featherweight 221K was available when eBay sent me an email a number of days ago and I sat and watched the auction for nearly a week...waiting patiently.

And then I frustratingly watched as people outbid each other driving the price up and I think to myself, "Why?!  Why does someone fight with someone else causing the price to be greater for yourself".  I already determined I was going to buy this machine no matter the cost and estimated to Scott it would probably run about $2,000 (or possibly more) if someone really knew what they were getting.  I know the value and the rareness of this machine. Prior to today, the price was only $425 so I thought perhaps, just perhaps, it would go lower than I anticipated, but at about 6 pm tonight these two people, d***e and 5***u started going back and forth and I knew it was going to be a large bid.  And, I was a bit frustrated.

The machine itself is just bare bones.  But, since I have the 222K and the parts are interchangeable, I'm OK with that.  I am also planning on having someone paint and refurbish my little girl so it will be in tip-top shape when I finally get my hand on her.  Tomorrow I  need to reach out and see who can get this done for me before the seller ships the machine out.  Hopefully I can just have it sent directly to the refurbisher and painter.  I'll be contacting Featherweights in Color and Singer Featherweight Revived and see if either of them are available.  Look how awesome the featherweights are painted out and brand new again!!

(Web Photo from Featherweights in Color)

So, here are some photos of my new girl, Susie-Q (my other machine is called Susie-Q 2 (for the 222K).

I'm so excited.  This is such a great find!!  I'm in L-O-V-E!!