Enjoy your new machine. It’s as reliable as a boy scout and won’t let you down. I have a later model Galaxy XII and it’s a champ. Weighs a ton, so I won’t be slinging it over my shoulder for a trip to the coffee shop any day soon.
What really sold me on the Galaxie is its bottom plate. For some reason, that undercarriage antiskid plate gives me the reassurance my words can survive off-roading!
I had the same experience—having no interest in late S-Cs, which I’d dismissed on the grounds of style and period, then becoming interested during a visit to a vintage store. And like you, I soon found one in like-new condition.
My Galaxie XII has two changeable keys (the 1/! and the =/+), which I opted to replace with the four most common diacritical marks.
LOVE the green platen! I’ve never seen that before on a vintage machine that wasn’t a recent replacement.
As the years rolled on, I think Smith-Corona quality plunged. At least that was my experience. The Coronamatic that I bought in the late 1970s was a complete piece of junk. Although the cartridge ribbons and correction tape worked perfectly, I could never get one whose letters were precisely aligned. It took two exchanges to end up with one that was acceptable — and even then it wasn’t nearly as well-aligned as my mom’s manual Silent-Super. My mistake was probably that I bought the lowest-priced Coronamatic model, so maybe it just wasn’t constructed with high-quality materials. I should have obtained a refund on that Coronamatic electric and bought a high-quality used manual machine from a typewriter shop, but I was desperate for that film-ribbon look at a budget price.
Excellent choice! I’ve had probably a dozen of the 60’s/70’s era 6-Series Galaxies, and have found every one of them to be very good writing irons, and common enough to not mind giving them away to various folk. I would say that when it comes to the manual machines (not so much the electrics), the quality stayed pretty good even into the 80’s (yep, there are Galaxies made in the early 1980’s). I have kept only one in my permanent corral, though – a very early 1960 model in cursive: https://typewriterdatabase.com/1960-smith-corona-galaxie.4273.typewriter
Hey, Reverend, what’s your opinion of the Coronamatics? I was totally unimpressed with the fit and finish of my entry-level machine. Were there high-end models that were known for proper registration and durable construction?
L.T. Hanlon 
These are nice machines. I love the green platen, too.
LikeLike
Enjoy your new machine. It’s as reliable as a boy scout and won’t let you down. I have a later model Galaxy XII and it’s a champ. Weighs a ton, so I won’t be slinging it over my shoulder for a trip to the coffee shop any day soon.
LikeLike
What really sold me on the Galaxie is its bottom plate. For some reason, that undercarriage antiskid plate gives me the reassurance my words can survive off-roading!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had the same experience—having no interest in late S-Cs, which I’d dismissed on the grounds of style and period, then becoming interested during a visit to a vintage store. And like you, I soon found one in like-new condition.
My Galaxie XII has two changeable keys (the 1/! and the =/+), which I opted to replace with the four most common diacritical marks.
LOVE the green platen! I’ve never seen that before on a vintage machine that wasn’t a recent replacement.
LikeLike
As the years rolled on, I think Smith-Corona quality plunged. At least that was my experience. The Coronamatic that I bought in the late 1970s was a complete piece of junk. Although the cartridge ribbons and correction tape worked perfectly, I could never get one whose letters were precisely aligned. It took two exchanges to end up with one that was acceptable — and even then it wasn’t nearly as well-aligned as my mom’s manual Silent-Super. My mistake was probably that I bought the lowest-priced Coronamatic model, so maybe it just wasn’t constructed with high-quality materials. I should have obtained a refund on that Coronamatic electric and bought a high-quality used manual machine from a typewriter shop, but I was desperate for that film-ribbon look at a budget price.
LikeLike
Excellent choice! I’ve had probably a dozen of the 60’s/70’s era 6-Series Galaxies, and have found every one of them to be very good writing irons, and common enough to not mind giving them away to various folk. I would say that when it comes to the manual machines (not so much the electrics), the quality stayed pretty good even into the 80’s (yep, there are Galaxies made in the early 1980’s). I have kept only one in my permanent corral, though – a very early 1960 model in cursive:
https://typewriterdatabase.com/1960-smith-corona-galaxie.4273.typewriter
LikeLike
Hey, Reverend, what’s your opinion of the Coronamatics? I was totally unimpressed with the fit and finish of my entry-level machine. Were there high-end models that were known for proper registration and durable construction?
LikeLike