German Enigma Machine on Ebay...

[Spazmogen]

LINK

I've never seen one for sale before.

For you young types: this is what Germany used in WW2 for secure communications. Except that the Poles & British had broken it and read everything. Britan then gave it to its own diplomats and Commonwealth countries to use after WW2, without ever disclosing that the codes were broken. So England could still read the letters...long before PGP & Entrust were developed.

It's currently going for $32,000 USD with a few days to go.

[LoneWolf]

Wow, it looks well preserved, or completely restored. It's the early war three-wheel version; later models used by the Kreigsmarine (the three-wheel was used generally by the Whermacht) had four wheels, and it took the Allies some real work cracking that one.

The geek in me would love to have one, but it truly belongs in a museum. (that, and I don't have that kind of spare coin).

For the geeks in you, you can find some great information on this on Wikipedia or read the relevant fiction novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.