If anyone is looking to buy one, I recently bought a restored Sunbeam T-20 from timstoasters.com and love it. He even replaced the plug with a polarized one.
Ah, European standard plugs don't have that. I guess that makes it mandatory to have the power switch interrupt both wires, at least that's what lamps here tend to have.
Polarized plugs have one of the prongs bigger than the other and will only fit one way into an outlet. This ensures that you actually know which wire is hot and which wire is neutral and can ensure the switch controls hot (the power source) rather than neutral (the power return).
Not every country even has polarized plugs, though. The concept was new to me too at a time. The German Schuko plug for example is unpolarized, as is the euro plug, so there's no polarized plug options here.
It's high, but not unreasonably so, compared to a decent modern toaster. For example, a dualit 4 slice toaster is £200/$260. Pretty much everyone I know who has one is happy with it, and it meets modern safety standards out of the box.
Holy cow. We have one of these handed down to us. After learning how to calibrate the springs, it runs great. Didn't realize how much wealth it created for us as well.