Originally Posted by instiches
Picked up a portable machine at a thrift store yesterday.
It looks a bit like the Singer Ultralight, but it is labeled as "Macy's Own Herald" The plate reads Precision Built Made In Japan
s/n # is 05615294 Any ideas if it is common or rare?
THANKS!
I think there were a lot of Singer-type machines made in Japan which were then "badged" with different names. The machine itself is probably fairly common, but the badge could be rare. I don't know that anyone collects badges for sewing machines, though, so I doubt it has any collector's value. You might set up a year-long search at eBay with keywords to see if any turn up there. Also, you can do a search of completed items on eBay to see if any have sold there within the last 1 to 3 months (I think that's all the history they keep). An actual selling price is a much better indication of value than an asking price. Many people think any aged sewing machine is valuable, but that is not the case because there was such high production of many models.