Bidders in an internet auction are offering over 13,000 euros ($15,600) for a wartime German encoding machine, similar to ones whose messages were cracked by British code breakers in World War Two.
The portable Enigma encryption machine made in 1941 has a keyboard and a series of rotors designed to scramble messages. It is up for sale on internet auction site, eBay.
"We've had it inspected by an expert who said that due to its good condition it looks very likely to have been in German state ownership at the time," said Alexander Urff of Sales Service, the Munich-based company selling the device.
Urff said on Thursday he was offering the Enigma machine on behalf of a customer whose grandfather bought it just after the war.
He believes the scrambler is genuine but serial numbers which could give a clue to its history had been removed. Encased in sturdy oak boxes, the Enigma machines were most famously used by Hitler's forces and featured in a successful novel and 2001 film of the same title, starring Kate Winslet.
The film, based on secret work done at Britain's Bletchley Park during the war, is about a young man who helps the British authorities to break the Nazis' military codes.
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