Originally Posted by
Skyangel
Interesting. Serial number in picture dates it to 1926, but it has a 1936 Texas Exposition Badge. Wonder if they just took some machines sitting in inventory and changed the badge to ship it to Texas?
10 years is an awfully long time (though those particular 10 years were full of a lot of upheaval and a shortage of money worldwide, so maybe sewing machine sales were low enough to see them have a stock pile that big.), but what Singer did is make machines and store them til they were to be shipped to dealers (and possibly in this case to the Texas Exhibition) The machines didn't get their badges til they were about to leave the factories.
That's how I ended up with a 1948 Singer Centennial 15-90. The DH read that on a site somewhere, but I don't know where he found it.
So assuming they were new machines leaving Singer's factories to attend this event, that's probably what happened. Otherwise, jennb is probably right.