- Title: Bought for 100 euros, World War Two Enigma machine sells for 45,000
- Date: 11th July 2017
- Summary: BUCHAREST, ROMANIA (JULY 11, 2017) (REUTERS) COLLECTIBLE CONSIGNMENT MANAGER AT ARTMARK, CRISTIAN GAVRILA, BRINGING ENIGMA I MACHINE INTO ROOM VARIOUS OF GAVRILA OPENING ENIGMA I MACHINE (SOUNDBITE) (Romanian) COLLECTIBLE CONSIGNMENT MANAGER AT ARTMARK, CRISTIAN GAVRILA, SAYING: "The collector bought it from a flea market as typewriting machine. He's a cryptography professor who dedicated his life to Enigma, so he knew very well what he was buying and he's maybe doing his life's business." USER MANUAL IN GERMAN (SOUNDBITE) (Romanian) COLLECTIBLE CONSIGNMENT MANAGER AT ARTMARK, CRISTIAN GAVRILA, SAYING: "Internationally, in past years, this kind of machine is sold for over 300,000 dollars." VARIOUS OF ENIGMA I MACHINE GAVRILA "TYPING" ON ENIGMA I MACHINE PEOPLE GATHERING FOR THE AUCTION AUCTION NUMBER VARIOUS OF AUCTION IN PROGRESS ENIGMA I MACHINE BEING SOLD VARIOUS OF ARTMARK AUCTION HOUSE ENTRANCE
- Embargoed: 25th July 2017 23:58
- Keywords: Enigma auction World War Two cipher Bucharest
- Location: BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
- City: BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
- Country: Romania
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Human Interest / Brights / Odd News
- Reuters ID: LVA0016P9YT09
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Someone in Romania thought he'd made a fair amount of money when he sold an old typewriter for 100 euros at a flea market. He was wrong.
The "typewriter" was, in fact, a German Wehrmacht Enigma I, a World War Two cipher machine, and the collector who bought it put it up for sale at the Bucharest auction house Artmark with a starting price of 9,000 euros ($10,300).
On Tuesday (July 11) Artmark sold it to an online bidder for 45,000 euros.
Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany until 1944, when it switched sides to the allies. Historians say it may host many other cryptographic machines not yet discovered.
Last month, Christie's New York Books set a world auction record of $547,500 with its sale of a "four-rotor Enigma cipher machine, 1944," to an online bidder.
The Enigma was used to encode and decode messages sent by the various branches of the Nazi military, but the British mathematician Alan Turing and his team at Britain's wartime codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park, cracked the codes. By some estimates, their work shortened the war by two years. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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