The Silver Lining

Detective Polhaus: “Heavy. What is it?”
Sam Spade: “The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.”

Last night was rainy. Several storms moved through the area, bringing heavy rain, strong wind, and occasional light hail. The lightning show was spectacular.

Under normal circumstances, I would not have been out in it, braving the rain-slicked roads in the Mustang. It’s low-traction and high-torque. It doesn’t take much to make it fishtail or hydroplane in bad weather. But no rain clouds would deter me this night as I rounded the Twin Cities and headed north. For you see, these storm clouds had a silver lining.

A sterling silver lining, to be exact.

It’s a bit tarnished now, but with the proper care it should shine up nicely. For those unfamiliar, this is the almost-never-seen sterling silver edition Smith-Corona Sterling. The body is solid sterling silver, made by Gorham. They were made as part of a promotional window display for dealers in late 1931. The most accurate figure I have located for the total number made is 184. Only a fraction of those seem to have survived. Perhaps the reason for that is that Smith-Corona actually suggested to dealers that if they didn’t sell the silver machine by the end of the promotion they could recoup most of the cost of the $127.50 display by selling the machine in a regular housing and taking the silver housing to a silversmith for the market price of the silver.

I’ll have more about how this particular model came to be on Machines of Loving Grace soon.

EDIT: MoLG has been updated.