€100 'typewriter' turns out to be €45,000 Enigma machine

A cryptography professor wandering through a Romanian flea market has turned a nice ROI on his €100 investment: €45,000. That's because what was on offer was a 1941-manufacture German Army three-rotor Enigma I. The unnamed collector who picked it up sold it through Bucharest auction house Artmark, and the unit beat its €9,000 …

[Anonymous Coward]

There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

I wish I could find where gramps hid the MG 42 machine gun from the Gestapo BMW R75 which broke down when the came looking for him and ended up stranded in front of his GP practice. The legend is that a pot of sugar from the cafana across the road ended up in the fuel tank while the Fritz was turning the house upside down. The local police tasked with "guarding it" heard no evil, saw no evil. They Germans never came back to pick it up as the country turned sides and they hastily had to bugger out.

It was repaired, the machine gun removed. Gramps hid it somewhere and nobody knows where it is.

After that he used the R75 as his runabout for the next 30 years until my stupid cousin destroyed it by losing control on it and careering off the road. So while I cannot get my mitts of the R75, the gun is still somewhere out there. Probably in a concealed cavity in the old house somewhere (knowing gramps it is wrapped in oiled rags so it does not rust).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Careful with those Eastern European flea markets, you could be picking up a Cobalt60 cannister or similar, worth having a Geiger counter handy just in case.

[AMBxx]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

I was in a wine cellar in Austria about 20 years ago. The owner's grandparents had sealed off one end of the cellar at the outbreak of war. Nobody knows what's in there and nobody was planning to open it.

I couldn't have lasted a week without drilling a hole and taking a look.

[ChrisBedford]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

[i]I couldn't have lasted a week without drilling a hole and taking a look.[/i]

Umm yeah the owner's not telling you what his grandparents told him about the 2 nazis he stuffed in there

[hypnos]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

The usual ignorance-driven simplistic comments for parts of the world we don't really know much about.

I've been to many a flea-market here in Romania where I live for the last 12 years and I can assure you all the porcelain is Becquerel free :-}

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

>I've been to many a flea-market here in Romania where I live for the last 12 years and I can assure you all the porcelain is Becquerel free :-}

Sure the porcelain didn't come from Pripyat or surrounding districts ?

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Shame, they're nice bikes - I've got a 1973 R75/5. Remarkably long-lived model, too, available in very similar forms from 1936 all the way into the '90s.

GJC

[Dr Who]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

"bugger out" - like it. I think I'll add that to my vocab.

Reminds me of an Eastern European friend of mine, trying to impress upon me that he knew more than I gave him credit for. "You think I know fuck nothing, but I tell you I know fuck *all*". Legend.

[macjules]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Michael Curtiz directing The Charge of the Light Brigade .. also famous for the 'poodles of vater' quote during the filming of Casablanca

[Ugotta B. Kiddingme]

Re: "fuck nothing / fuck all"

As a Yank who gets most Brit slang but must occasionally consult my Scottish sister-in-law on a few of the odder ones, that nearly made me shoot coffee out my nose. I must remember to apply the "no coffee while reading BOFH and comments" to ALL comment threads herein.

[Tikimon]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

"You think I know fuck nothing, but I tell you I know fuck *all*"

THANK YOU for the priceless addition to my repertoire of self-mocking retorts! That's awesome!

[Rockets]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

"You think I know fuck nothing, but I tell you I know fuck *all*"

That exact line appeared in the 1999 Australian movie "The Wog Boy".

Another ripper from that movie was: "I'm half-Serbian, half-Croatian. I wake up in morning, I want to kill myself!"

[Andus McCoatover]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Bit like my Dutch friend, proud of his English skills, 35 years ago after an argument calling me a "Bunch of shit".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

> calling me a "Bunch of shit".

Sounds quite offensive actually. Especially with a Dutch accent.

[staggers]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

@Dr Who

So, your friend was Peter Lorre then! Except, in the original movie all those decades ago he said 'damn'!

[jgarbo]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Seems your friend pinched the quote from Hungarian Michael Curtiz, director of Casablanca, on the set of Romance on the High Seas.

...[berating David Niven during an on-set argument] You think you know fuck everything and I know fuck nothing. Well, let me tell you, I know fuck all!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

I remember my friend in France. While digging out the garden to extend the house, he came across a stash of WWII howitzer shells, 105mm and 150mm. On the rear was stamped "1939" along with the Nazi Swastika and crest (looked like this, but in black ink: http://p2.la-img.com/368/37062/15564728_1_l.jpg ), still relatively fresh and rust free.

Talk about holding a piece of history in your hands.

I joked he just needed to find the artillery piece to go with the shells, but he smiled and said he knew a guy with a leFH 18 in their wine cellar. Still am not sure if he was pulling my leg or not.

Funny to think that Europe is considered to be very much a "gun free" zone, whereas in actuality the place is swimming in weapons, some of which would make the Americans jealous. Especially in eastern europe, where combination of Nazis, the resistance, the cold-war USSR and NATO paranoia resulted in massive caches of all sorts of hardware being buried in random places in case of invasion by all sides involved.

Not to mention citizens who got a hold of weapons during the wars and stashed them away in their houses in case of future conflicts, or are buried in specific locations, kept secret and passed down the generations "just in case"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Not only Eastern Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

> Funny to think that Europe is considered to be very much a "gun free" zone

By whom? It's just not something that we need to make a huge fuss about, but for most of Europe legal access to firearms is quite uncomplicated (not in the UK outside NI).

[rh587]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Especially in eastern europe, where combination of Nazis, the resistance, the cold-war USSR and NATO paranoia resulted in massive caches of all sorts of hardware being buried in random places in case of invasion by all sides involved.

Not to mention citizens who got a hold of weapons during the wars and stashed them away in their houses in case of future conflicts, or are buried in specific locations, kept secret and passed down the generations "just in case"

Let us not forget the origins of Heckler and Koch - three engineers from the Mauser factory in Oberndorf salvaged various machinery and tools (lathes, mills and perhaps most importantly, deep-boring gear required for barrel manufacture). Hid it in a hay shed for a few years whilst France was busy stripping the place and dismantling the factory, before starting up as a generic engineering firm and eventually moving back into firearms.

Lots of stuff "made to disappear" by locals ahead of seizures by either the Allied or Soviet occupying forces.

[Old Used Programmer]

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

Apparently the science fiction fans made a number printing presses "disappear" during the crackdown following the rise of Solidarity. Fan publishing really took off...

[Joseph Haig]

Reason for sale

"I'm getting rid of it because all the keys are messed up. Every time I type something it shows complete gibberish!"

[Spudley]

Re: Reason for sale

"I'm getting rid of it because all the keys are messed up. Every time I type something it shows complete gibberish!"

"All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reason for sale

"All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?"

How did you get your keyboard to sound like a Dick van Dyke cockney impression?

Mewrry Pawppens!

Chem cheminoy chem cheminoy chim cham cheroo. Im not weally fwom lahndan but Wawt Disnay aint too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reason for sale

> How did you get your keyboard to sound like a Dick van Dyke cockney impression?

The poor bastard. Fifty years latter people are still taking the piss (it was an awful impression, mind).

[tinman]

Re: Reason for sale

and not only that but it never prints the same letter twice

[Anonymous Coward]

Reason for Sale

This did not help my dyslexia at all..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reason for Sale

Or maybe it did?

[J P]

Is there any particular reason why this has been filed under "Personal Tech"? I'd have thought perhaps "Security" would be more appropriate, but maybe the staff at ElReg have one of these each for personal use..?

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

The excuse note I typed on it came out all weird

THYGP XYWLK GHRNI QOPIY COVFE FETRU MPXPI

[Valerion]

Re: The excuse note I typed on it came out all weird

THYGP XYWLK GHRNI QOPIY COVFE FETRU MPXPI

At least that's one mystery solved.

[fobobob]

Re: The excuse note I typed on it came out all weird

Kind of reminds me of a Microsoft license key...

[Meph]

Re: The excuse note I typed on it came out all weird

"a Microsoft license key..."

It got me wondering where I'd left my elder sign medallion.

Hmm... now that I think about it, perhaps there was something more behind the "dance monkey boy" video from that old Microsoft developer conference...

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Mine is the mysterious looking set of robes, and please don't forget the wizard's hat!

[TeeCee]

Re: The excuse note I typed on it came out all weird

Aha! That explains the flood of ten quid keys on eBay.

ISTR that someone built a Colossus replica....

[RealBigAl]

Just in time

to make a come back to defeat soon to be mandated vpn back doors....

[Anonymous Coward]

I dream of this...

I am sure I am not unusual in this, but in my every visit to a flea market or second hand book store I secretly hope to stumble upon some unrecognized first edition (in my daydreams its a first edition of The Hobbit) or some nazi memorabilia. I visit toy shops in small towns hoping they have an unsold Ultimate Millennium Falcon ("Thats been sitting there for years, no one wants to buy it, its too expensive. I can give you half off if you like...")

My hands would have been trembling as I paid them $100 for that 'typewriter'. I'm not sure I would have sold it either - I'm not that type. I think it would be my prize conversation piece on a shelf at home....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I dream of this...

Problem is, people have the internet these days. That old vase that in the old days would of sold for a fiver. These days a quick search and you suddenly find it's a Clarice Cliff.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I dream of this...

"Problem is, people have the internet these days"

Don't be too sure. A little while ago Bargain Hunt picked up a silver item inscribed as a gift to William Crookes. Nobody seemed to have picked up on the fact that that was a rather significant name - where would all those telly people be without Sir William Crookes' discovery of cathode rays?

Was the dedicatee really that Sir William? A quick look at wonkypedia would have confirmed the date. A little further research would have revealed that the donors names and initials corresponded with another FRS, Augustus Desiré Waller and Alice Mary Waller, both physiologists at a time when women in science were still rare. I'd have loved to have been at the auction when that came up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I dream of this...

What a weird dream you have and thats coming from a guy thats seen things you wouldn't believe.

I dream of electric sheep. Mind you I am an android (as in skinjob, not phone. Man it was easier being an android in the 80s).

*gets coat*

[Simon Rockman]

Meanwhile some beautiful old typewriters are worth nothing. £100 is steep. My Imperial is worth about that, but my Royal Barlock maybe worth more. I'm picking up an IBM golfball at the weekend.

[Alister]

I'm picking up an IBM golfball at the weekend.

That must be quite rare nowadays, IBM execs can't afford to play golf anymore...

:)

[macjules]

No, they just land their helicopters on golf courses these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM Execs

Not user about IBM execs not being able to play golf.. I am currently in Rochester and the gulf club seemed to be full of fat cats..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethics failure?

Hmm...

I'd have thought a Professor of Cryptography would have the decency to at least go 50-50 with the original owner. He could have just said "leave my your email address" and paid.

Guess the world doesn't work like that...

[xeroks]

Re: Ethics failure?

€100 seems steep for an old typewriter. Perhaps the seller was already making a huge profit already.

I remember reading (years ago) about a woman who sold her house to a bloke for double what she thought it was worth. She was very happy, even when, hours later, he sold it for double again to a supermarket who needed the land for their development.

Of course he knew about the supermarket's plans, but I suspect was able to gauge how much they were willing to spend.

[Daniel von Asmuth]

€100 seems steep for an old typewriter

Compare that to $ 50,000 for a measly Apple I.

[Mike 16]

Re: €100 seems steep for an old typewriter

--- $ 50,000 for a measly Apple I. ---

Quite possibly the worst investment decision I ever made was to turn down the opportunity to buy an Apple I for $75 (or all three the seller had for $200). I occasionally comfort myself with the thought that it's a tossup for bigger fool between me and him, as I believe he sold all three eventually at about that price.

[macjules]

Re: €100 seems steep for an old typewriter

A friend of mine has Mac #36, completely untouched in its original shipping packaging. Wonder how much that is worth now.

[John Doe 12]

Re: Ethics failure?

Who says that the original seller didn't laugh to themselves when selling a "broken typewriter" for EUR100 and think "Sucker!!!" There is no ethics fail here in my view, just other people suffering from good old begrudgery.

Obviously it is a different story if people go doorknocking old grannies and con them into selling the family jewels for a fiver.

[jeffdyer]

Re: Ethics failure?

Original owner? You mean the German army?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ethics failure?

So anyone who makes a profit on something is ethically obligated to share the proceeds with the previous owner? What planet are you from?

[LaeMing]

Re: Ethics failure?

"So anyone who makes a profit on something is ethically obligated to share the proceeds with the previous owner? What planet are you from?"

He is from the MPAA/RIAA.

[magickmark]

My Find

Many years ago I came across a box full of 1st Ed's by the Irish author Lord Dunsany* at a book fair. Each one was just a few pounds each, not sure of the exact price but £2-£5 range. I hummed and hared but eventually moved on, but taking a card from the stall holder.

A few weeks latter regretting that I did not buy them I called him up and brought the whole box for something like £15 or so including postage.

On arrival I saw that each one had a book plate in the inside cover for a "Frances Perry" and hand written date that matched the publication dates and also some also had a second date for the late 70's in the same hand.

Intrigued I did some research and found out that there was a Frances Perry** who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and that she was also an associate of Aleister Crowley.

I have no way of knowing if my books belonged to the same Frances Perry but as Dunsany's works are mainly fantasy of an esoteric nature it would fit.

Dunsany 1st Ed's now sell for £90-£150 and with the possible connections to Crowley and the Golden Dawn maybe even more if I could prove the provenance.

I still have them all and would never sell them.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany

** A Google search for that name now finds information for "Frances Mary Perry MBE VMH (19 February 1907 – 11 October 1993)[1] was a gardener, administrator, writer and broadcaster." I'd assume a different Frances Perry but her birth date would fit.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: My Find

Well I have all the HHGTTG books in their original covers :p

[magickmark]

Re: My Find

Cool me as well!!

[whileI'mhere]

Re: FailCEO

Cool you? Why? Are you hot? And why "as well"? Nobody else mentioned needing to be cooled.

(Punctuation. Makes a difference, every time!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FailCEO

> (Punctuation. Makes a difference, every time!)

ROMANINONCONCORDABANTVR

[SteveK]

Re: My Find

Well I have all the HHGTTG books in their original covers :p

I don't. When I went to University, my parents decided to take a bunch of my old 'kids things' to the charity shop and/or dump while redecorating.

Mostly books, including my HHG set and the original Steve Jackson/Ian Livingstone fighting fantasy books, but also a 1970s Dalek (although to be fair I think it had lost one of its arms, and batteries had leaked) and a few other things that now would have been collectable.. To be fair, at the time they probably would have just seemed to be clutter.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: My Find

Surely that's theft plus destruction of property, *both* criminal acts. The penalty is unlimited all the way up to life imprisonment.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: My Find

"Surely that's theft plus destruction of property, *both* criminal acts. The penalty is unlimited all the way up to life imprisonment."

No, he left his property in someone elses building and didn't pay storage fees.

[Stevie]

Re: My Find (When I went to University)

I had a friend who, back in 1987, decided to collect an entire chapter of "beaky" Space Marines for the Goons Wonkshop game Wonkhammer 401K Rogue Trader.

He accordingly set about buying up all the $22, 30 minis per box sets he could find until he had the requisite 1000. He gave up at around 500, deciding half a chapter would do for now. He washed the sprues and left them to dry so that he could paint them. While he was at it he acquired a few hundred Space Hulk Genestealers for another Wonkhammer 401K project.

Some of these Marine sprues were the ultra-rare blue styrene ones from the very first production runs.

Whereupon dear old Mom decided to clean out the basement and tossed them all in the garbage.

Months of effort. almost $600 of investment, chewed up in hydraulic masher in the back of a dustcart.

He was pissed-off for weeks.

[A. N. Onymouse]

Re: My Find

In my case first edition hard cover of the first three Discworld books signed "Best Wishes. Terry", "Besterer wishes. Terry" & "Besterest wishes. Terry".

All three mysteriously went missing from my house at some point.

I think that an orangutan stole them for the library

[J.G.Harston]

I have a complete set of rare *unautographed* Pratchetts.

[Stevie]

Re: rare *unautographed* Pratchetts.

If that isn't worth an e-beer I dunno what is.

Here y'go!

[jelabarre59]

I have a complete set of rare *unautographed* Pratchetts.

At some Lunacon in the late '80s, looking at the long autograph line awaiting him, Isaac Asimov commented to my brother and I that someday an *UNautographed* Asimov book would be rarer than an autographed one (I was ConCom, so we were making he was set up with water & pens, etc.).

[Mike 125]

Typical

What an embarrassing wasted morning that was: on a new contract in Austria, I entered a default password, prior to a boot script changing the input language to German. To this day, I have to occasionally type 'Vozager123' to gain entry. Confound those Germans and their tricky keyboard mappings...

[steve 124]

Breaking news....

Parliament just called an emergency session to discuss the threat this new encryption method presents to the UK. Back room discussions regarding quietly installing a backdoor universal key on all the remaining undiscovered enigma machines are expected to be pushed through the House later this week.

Meanwhile, 3D printing schematics for the device have surfaced on several "Dark Web" sites including 4chan and something called Reddit (which obviously sounds Russian, I mean it starts with a capital R).

A recently leaked document showing that the Trump administration was involved in the design, use and distribution of these now Russian devices during the campaign, which obviously allowed him to secretly collude with his KGB handlers... (Oh, and here's a video where he admits to this entire scheme... please ignore the lip artifacts, we're still working the bugs out of the software).

Oh, and we never went to the moon.

...

....

......

[Anonymous Coward]

Romanian

I am not particularly fluent in any Romance language, but I was amazed how much of that I could read.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Romanian

> I am not particularly fluent in any Romance language, but I was amazed how much of that I could read.

With a bit of practice and knowledge of a Romance language or two¹, Romanian is fairly easy to read. Understanding *spoken* Romanian, on the other hand, is a bit more of a challenge.

¹ Knowing Romance *and* Slavic languages makes it even easier, as many turns of phrase as borrowed from their Slavic neighbours.

[John H Woods]

Swimbo

chucked out 3 pristine Model M keyboards whist I was working away from home. Almost divorce.

[d3vy]

My mum had a clear out when I went to college...

Original NES, light gun, infra red controls and a stack of games.

Massive box of thunder cats.

Most of my SNES games...

I could have cried (I still might).

[LaeMing]

My sister does that to her kids' things quite often. I find the idea of treating someone else's property like that just because the happen to be my own child a little upsetting, TBH!

[ICPurvis47]

Parental Chuckouts

Whilst I was away at Uni, my mother passed my huge collection of Meccano (Put together over many years from my pocket money) and my collection of Dinky and Corgi cars and lorries, to my cousins. The next time I visited my uncle on his farm in Devon, the farmyard was littered with Meccano pieces, mostly rusty and crushed by the passing of the tractor and other implements. Broke my heart. On the other hand, I now regret getting rid of several collectable cars that were, at the time, beyond economic repair but now would be priceless. Such as a 1959 Chevrolet "Gull-Wing" station wagon, a 1961 Van Den Plas Princess 3 litre, a 1947 Austin 10 (the same age as myself), two 1960ish Goggomobils, and a 1961 BMW Isetta bubble car. 20-20 hindsight is no substitute for a glimpse into the future.

[magickmark]

Re: Parental Chuckouts

"20-20 hindsight is no substitute for a glimpse into the future."

I find the best solution for this is a pair of beer glasses especially on a Friday afternoon.

Here's one to start you off.

[magickmark]

@ whileI'mhere :)

Commas, in, comments, should, not, be, missed,

But, once, in, a, while, what, happens, is, this,

A, quick, remark, is, all, that, is, needed,

Grammar, and, punctuation, tends, not, to, be, heeded,

Forgive, me, my, sins, I'll, try, not, to, repeat,

I, feel, the, shame, right, down, to, my, feet

But, just, in, case, it, happens, again,

Here, are, a, few, spare, you, can, just, slip, them, in,

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @ whileI'mhere :)

"Commas, in, comments, should, not, be, missed,"

I was once on a course where one of the lecturers was a former director of Macmillan. He remarked that commas are perhaps the most contentious thing in all punctuation. Americans tend to use them more than the British. Normally the ideal is to have the fewest commas compatible with the text being understandable, as each one represents a small hesitation.

And lawyers, of course, used to like to avoid commas if at all possible due to the risk of a comma getting lost in transcription or printing.

"The Panda eats, shoots, and leaves" is of course an example of superfluous commas, not the absence thereof.

Icon to indicate where unwanted commas should end up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @ whileI'mhere :)

For a moment I thought, you might be German ← They write like this. The idea being, that there should be a comma somewhere between verbs. Which is, how you can spot Germans on the internet. Bit like the French leaving a space before exclamation or question marks !

[Stevie]

Utk!

Qpan Ds!

[Paul Hovnanian]

Found this typewriter ...

... in my cellar. Must be defective, as it just produces gibberish when I type something in. Into the dustbin it goes.