A Visual Guide to Identifying Singers from Crappy Craigslist Photos, Part 5: Is It a 99?

Model 99, up top, is stubbier. Model 66, on the bottom, is longer.

The model 66 is a full-size machine; the model 99 is a 3/4-size machine with the same visual DNA as the 66, the same lines and curves. Identifying the model 99 by sight is fairly easy, because it's just a horizontally-squashed version of the model 66, as you can see above.

The model 99 is the only 3/4-size machine I'm covering in this series. One other 3/4-size machine you might see on Craigslist--I've only seen one once or twice--is the model 28/128. This is easily distinguishable by the shovel-shaped inspection plate and/or dual slide plates:

NOT a 99, as evidenced by these features.

So, if you see either of those indicators, you'll know it's not a 99. The 99 has a single center-mounted slide plate, as seen below:

A Visual Guide to Identifying Singers from Crappy Craigslist Photos, Part 3: Is it a 201?

In the first two parts of this series, we learned to identify model 15s. If you've ruled out the model 15, we'll next see if it's a 201 before moving on.

The 201 can often be mistaken for a 66 in bad Craigslist photos, because the silhouettes can seem similar. If the photo's high-quality, you can see the difference, as below:

201

66

But many times the photo is too small, dark or blurry to clearly see the top line. In that case, we resort to identifying a 201 based on a few things.

A Visual Guide to Identifying Singers from Crappy Craigslist Photos, Part 1

This is a visual guide to identifying certain black, cast-iron vintage Singer machines: The 66, 99, 201, 206, and 15 both potted and belted. These are the models I find to be most common in my area (NYC).

The excellent online Singer identification guide from Sandman Collectibles is the current gold standard for identifying vintage Singer machines. It asks you to check off a list of features seen on your machine, narrowing it down until you arrive at the model number. It's predicated on having the machine in front of you, where you can see everything clearly.

But what if you're looking at a tiny, dark, poorly shot, grainy, out-of-focus photo on Craigslist or eBay and can't answer all of the questions asked by the Sandman page? This will help SOME of you (please read the caveat at the bottom of this entry) to look at a Craigslist photo and figure out if it's the model you're looking for or not. In general I don't look for common technical details like where the tension dial is or what side the light is on; I just look at the overall lines of the machine and a couple of clues that show up no matter how crappy the photo.

Case in point--the other day I clicked on a Craigslist ad saying only "Singer sewing machine" and saw this photo:

The photo's small, dark, shot from a weird angle and shows no detail, but I immediately knew it was a model 99. (I later e-mailed the woman and she confirmed it.) How did I know? You'll find out in this series of entries.