An incredibly rare Enigma Machine is heading to auction at Auction Team Breker in Cologne, Germany with an estimate of €70,000 - €120,000.
The auction takes place on 25th March with an opening bid of €55,000.
The Enigma machine is a 1944 Cipher machine factory Heimsoeth & Rinke example with serial number A 17867/jla/1944, with a standard QWERTY keyboard with 26 keys, 16 plugs and cables.
Housed in it's original wooden casing, the Enigma Machine is also being sold with its original instruction manual.
The Enigma Machine was devised by Dr Arthur Scherbius and designed to produce over 22 billion combinations without repetition.
As such it was considered to be so secure that it was used by the Germans to encipher their most top-secret messages during the war.
The Enigma Machine code was famously broken by British mathematician Alan Turing, and by early 1943 Turing and his team were deciphering 84,000 messages a month, saving millions of lives in the process.
There are believed to be 318 Enigma Machines known to exist, the vast majority of which are in Museums around the world.
They rarely appear at auction, with the last one selling for $440,000 at Christies in July 2020.
Prior to that Sotheby's had sold a fully functioning M4 Enigma for $435,000 in 2017.
About your Author:
Adrian Roose has over 30 years’ experience covering all aspects of the rare stamp & memorabilia industry during which he has sold over £50m of unique items, helping build collections for Royalty, household name celebrities and 1,000s of collectors around the world.
Adrian was previously a Director at Stanley Gibbons, a Board Member of Stampex, and Executive Director of Paul Fraser Collectibles, PFC Auctions and JustCollecting, prior to founding The Memorabilia Club.