Hitler coding machine sold on eBay for $14

One of the machines used to send coded messages between Adolf Hitler and his generals sold for £10 on eBay after being discovered in a shed in England, the buyer says

Researchers at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park saw a “telegram machine” for sale on the auction site for £9.50 ($14), and believed it may have actually been a Lorenz machine, used by the German army to send top-secret coded messages.

“My colleague was scanning eBay and he saw a photograph of what seemed to be the teleprinter,” John Wetter, a volunteer at the museum in Buckinghamshire, south England, told the BBC.

To investigate further, Wetter traveled to the southeastern town of Southend where he found the machine, which resembles a typewriter, on the floor of a shed, covered “with rubbish.”

“We said ‘Thank you very much, how much was it again?’ She said ‘£9.50’, so we said ‘Here’s a £10 note — keep the change,” he added.

— AFP