Originally Posted by
miriam
maybe they were for luck
maybe they were hiding them for roasting later - but just 1?
I thought horse chestnuts were poisonous, so I looked it up. Turns out they can be used to make soap or shampoo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesculus_hippocastanum
Originally Posted by
Macybaby
I bet that 66 was bought used, and that is why it was cheap. Easy to find out with the model number. It could easily have been 10-15 years old in 1925 that the original owner traded in on a new side clamp with an electric motor on it, or one of those new fangled 101's that had recently come out!
Yeah, could have been repossessed, too. I'm surprised that Singer didn't change out the presser bar, though. Or maybe that was an option available for an extra charge. Or, maybe they were of the same mind as some modern-day collectors -- Machines should be kept in their original state and should be outfitted only with the attachments available at the time of manufacture ;)
Originally Posted by
ArchaicArcane
Did they stop making the 66 back clamp in 1923, or was the last set of serial numbers that would use them allocated in 1923? There are machines too that took years to leave the factory, hence why you see 1948 machines with centennial decals on them.
Good point. I don't know the serial number cutoff. Maybe Cathy knows. I think the price points to Cathy's explanation, though. I think prices always went up, in absolute dollars. Adjusted for inflation they did go down. But $45 was a lot of money in 1925. Maybe the $7 allowance was for cash. The brochure I have says "Liberal discounts for cash."