Want to impress your friends

[Jim, W5JO]

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/09/17/Enigma-machine-to-be-auctioned-in-London/UPI-99031316301992/?spt=hs&or=sn

You could one of a few.

[W4EWH]

Top Perera, W1TP, has been showing his collection of Enigma machines at NearFest and other flea markets for years: he has at least a dozen of them.

Anyone who wants one can buy Tom's collection: come to think of it, he may be the seller at Christie's.

Bill W1AC

[k4kyv]

They had one on display at Dayton this year, at the fleamarket space that sells and displays antique telegraph keys every year.  Also on display was the remains of another.  It looked like it might have been pulled from a bombed-out site, or deliberately destroyed by the Germans as the Allies were moving in. The good one had a six-figure price tag on it.

I suspect that in the years immediately following the end of the war, those things were a dime a dozen, an interesting war trophy with no outstanding monetary value. From the perspective of 20-20 hindsight, one could have easily amassed a substantial collection, something that would have been considered nothing any more special than hams who accumulated BC-610s and Model 19 teletype machines, or military buffs who acquired captured German weaponry for personal collections. Someone would be sitting pretty to-day if they had picked up a dozen enigma machines and kept them all these years in a dry place.

Of course, just because one unit sold for over $100,000 doesn't change the fact that there is a big difference between a six-figure asking price and a six-figure sale.