Bought for €100, World War II Enigma machine fetches €45,000 at auction

BUCHAREST – Someone in Romania thought he'd made a fair amount of money when he sold an old typewriter for €100 ($115) at a flea market. The "typewriter" was, in fact, a German Wehrmacht Enigma I, a World War II cipher machine, and the collector who bought it put it up for sale at the Bucharest auction house Artmark with a starting price of €9,000. On Tuesday, Artmark sold it to an online bidder for €45,000. "The collector bought it from a flea market. He's a cryptography professor and … he knew very well what he was buying," said Cristian Gavrila, the collectible consignment manager at Artmark.