1948 Singer Featherweight 221K & 1954 Singer Slant Needle

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My latest find: The “Blue Badge Centennial” Singer 15-91 sewing machine.

Singer celebrated 100 years of sewing machine manufacturing in 1951.  To commemorate this milestone they issued a special edition of their standard models.  There was nothing mechanically different about the special edition.  They weren't a different shape or a different color.  But they had one very important distinguishing characteristic:
Singer Sewing Machine Centennial badge
To commemorate 100 years of manufacturing, Singer struck a special edition trademark badge which graces the special edition models.  The Centennial badge has a distinctive blue band around the edge and the words "A Century of Sewing Service  1851-1951"  

Many of the machines of this limited edition were produced by the thousands or hundreds of thousands in previous and subsquent years, but only a limited number were issued with the blue badge.   Which makes this special edition stand out as unique, and therefore more valuable in the eyes of collectors.  

Which is why some sellers will tout a machine as a Centennial model to make their machine stand out in a crowd.  While certainly misleading, some will argue that it is not technically fraudulent because the machine in question was manufactured in 1951, the year Singer celebrated their centennial anniversary.

My latest find and restoration: THE JAPANESE MADE SINGER, CLASS 15 “CLONE” SEWING MACHINE

BRIEF HISTORY:
Singer Sewing Machine Company started making class 15 machines in 1879 and stopped making them in the mid-1950s.  I have one of the last ones, a 15-125.  It is a celery green color.  The Singer 15 brought us our standard needles today and the standard bobbin of today.  The class 15 bobbin hasn't changed much since 1879, and the needles you buy at any of the big box stores are 15x1 needles.  Now there are machines that take other needles or other bobbins, but the vast majority of machines on the market today use the bobbin and the needle that Singer developed for the 15K in 1879.

So how and why did they get copied?  At the end of World War II, the US government basically gave the Japanese the blueprints to the Singer 15 sewing machine.  This was done as an effort to help rebuild Japans economy.  Many different companies made these machines to get started and many are still in business today. 

Many prefer the clone machines over the original machines.  There are even many people in the vintage sewing machine world who refuse to call them clones because they aren't carbon copies of the Singer machines.  Singer was slow to introduce reverse but all three of our "clones" have that.  In many cases, the machines out of Japan were manufactured with better engineering making the sewing machine a smoother machine overall.  For those that do their machine quilting on a domestic machine, the clones often have the ability to easily drop the feed dogs when that's not always the case with the Singer machines.