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my latest acquisitions

Edward

Well-Known Member
By Jason Daley
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
JULY 13, 2017
WWII Enigma Machine Found at Flea Market Sells for $51,000
The legendary coding machine was first unearthed by a mathematician with a careful eye who purchased it for roughly $114

...a collector at a flea market in Bucharest, Romania, who found an intact German Enigma machine, the super-secret coding gadget used by Third Reich during World War II. After paying roughly $114 for the machine, Reuters reports that the cryptography machine sold at auction for roughly $51,620 to an anonymous online bidder earlier this week.

The seller was no ordinary thrift-store shopper. “It belonged to a mathematician who has spent most of his life decrypting codes,” Vlad Georgescu, relationship manager at Artmark, the auction house that sold the machine, tells Judith Vonberg at CNN. While the flea-market vendor thought the machine was a unique typewriter, the mathematician knew exactly what he was buying, and felt “compelled to purchase it.”

He didn’t sell the Enigma right away. Instead, Vonberg reports, he tinkered with the machine, cleaning it, fixing it and figuring out how it works. George Dvorsky at Gizmodo reports that the machine was produced in Berlin by manufacturers Heimsoeth & Rinke in 1941 and that the machine is functional and still in the original wooden box, both rarities.
..... Dvorsky reports about 20,000 of the machines were produced before and during WWII, but only about 50 are known to remain in museums with an unknown number held by private collectors. The flea-market machine is the more common three rotor Enigma I machine. According to Dvorsky, a rarer Enigma M4, with four rotors, sold for $365,000 in 2015. And just in June Christie’s in New York sold a four-rotor Enigma for a record $547,500.
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Garylafortuna

Well-Known Member
Thank you for this great information. Check out if you will, a book titled 'A Man Called Intrepid' (non fiction), about a man named William Stephenson, code name 'Intrepid' who was Winston Churchill's secret envoy during WW2. It has everything: Enigma Machines, spies, intrigues, the full catastrophe. He was the go-between for Churchill and FDR. Terrific stuff.
 

ausreenactor

Well-Known Member
The value of the Enigma machines has always puzzled me.... KY-57s did so much more.. Or even 'One Time Letter Pad' was a better cipher.....
 

Edward

Well-Known Member
I purchased this wood 1941 Zenith Model 6D-525 AM Vacuum Tube Radio from retroradiofarm. Its in excellent working order and very good physical condition.
one of only three radios built for Zenith by the Ingraham Clock Company, the "oldest cabinet maker in the USA", in Bristol, Connecticut. I believe its walnut or could be mahogany.
All original parts and factory finish although the original finish is thin in spots on top edge. The dial light was replaced with LED rated for 50,000 hours.
All paper and wax capacitors were replaced with modern equivalents
All out-of-spec resistors replaced with modern correct value and voltage equivalents.
I had them install their Bluetooth 4.0 receiver option so I could stream 1940s radio or my large collection of 40's radio shows like GI Jill's GI Jive, The Chesterfield Moonlight Serenade Show or the Glenn Miller show! I can Switch from Bluetooth MP3 to AM radio with a rocker switch installed on back panel. It includes a 3.5mm to mono RCA cable if I want to plug in my iPod or my iPhone directly.
DIMENSIONS: Approximately 11" x 7" x 7"
its still being fitted with the bluetooth option so I don't have it in hand just yet but was very excited to show this thing off! :D
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Earloffunk

Well-Known Member
Took delivery of a very nice used CWU 36 P in sage color. It was a strange feeling in the current situation to go to the customs office to pick it up when there are a lot of people (and you don’t know if the are ok or if they are infected...). Anyway it looks like it has been used very lightly and has only Minor piling on the cuffs. will See how it fits tonight.

stay safe and healthy!
 

ausreenactor

Well-Known Member
I purchased this wood 1941 Zenith Model 6D-525 AM Vacuum Tube Radio from retroradiofarm. Its in excellent working order and very good physical condition.
one of only three radios built for Zenith by the Ingraham Clock Company, the "oldest cabinet maker in the USA", in Bristol, Connecticut. I believe its walnut or could be mahogany.
All original parts and factory finish although the original finish is thin in spots on top edge. The dial light was replaced with LED rated for 50,000 hours.
All paper and wax capacitors were replaced with modern equivalents
All out-of-spec resistors replaced with modern correct value and voltage equivalents.
I had them install their Bluetooth 4.0 receiver option so I could stream 1940s radio or my large collection of 40's radio shows like GI Jill's GI Jive, The Chesterfield Moonlight Serenade Show or the Glenn Miller show! I can Switch from Bluetooth MP3 to AM radio with a rocker switch installed on back panel. It includes a 3.5mm to mono RCA cable if I want to plug in my iPod or my iPhone directly.
DIMENSIONS: Approximately 11" x 7" x 7"
its still being fitted with the bluetooth option so I don't have it in hand just yet but was very excited to show this thing off! :D
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Buy of the Year...
 

Micawber

Well-Known Member
I've been fortunate enought to have a play and poke about with more than one Enigma machine, interesting but not half as much fun as the Norden bomsight.
 

Edward

Well-Known Member
Joe DiMaggio( "Joltin' Joe" / "The Yankee Clipper") played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. He is widely considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time and widely known for his marriage and lifelong devotion to Marilyn Monroe. DiMaggio enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces on February 17, 1943, rising to the rank of sergeant.
He was stationed at Santa Ana, California, Hawaii, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, as a physical education instructor. He was released on a medical discharge in September 1945, due to chronic stomach ulcers. Other than being paid $21 a month, DiMaggio's service was as comfortable as a soldier's life could be. He spent most of his military career playing for baseball teams and in exhibition games against fellow Major Leaguers and minor league players, and superiors gave him special privileges due to his prewar fame. DiMaggio ate so well from an athlete-only diet that he gained 10 pounds, and while in Hawaii he and other players mostly tanned on the beach and drank.
Embarrassed by his lifestyle, DiMaggio requested that he be given a combat assignment but was turned down.

Just the same his parents Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio, both from Isola delle Femmine, were among the thousands of German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants classified as "enemy aliens" by the government after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Each was required to carry photo ID booklets at all times and were not allowed to travel outside a five-mile radius from their home without a permit. They were not, in fact, even allowed to visit the family restaurant. Giuseppe was barred from San Francisco Bay, where he had fished for decades, and his boat was seized. Rosalia became an American citizen in 1944, followed by Giuseppe in 1945.


Naturally I had to add one of his restaurant drinking glasses to my collection :)

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Edward

Well-Known Member
I've always been a fan of George Petty and one of my favorite pinups he ever did was the TWA Stewardess so I finally got one of the June 1941 promotional postcards... this one mailed and postmarked a mere 4 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor!

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ausreenactor

Well-Known Member
I've always been a fan of George Petty and one of my favorite pinups he ever did was the TWA Stewardess so I finally got one of the June 1941 promotional postcards... this one mailed and postmarked a mere 4 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor!

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Pearl Harbor...

"Oh Boy!!!" Got that right. Since 'Pearl' America has only seen that many zeros on the Covid19 stimulus debt.
 

Edward

Well-Known Member
added a nice war era Mechanical pencil to my vintage office supplies. The Scripto!
Variations in the clip design typically designate what years it was manufactured. These came in a variety of colors both transparent and opaque. 1930s versions are aluminum but plastic during the war. This particular yellow one I own from the war years is really hard to find for some reason. Its the rolled end on the tapered clip that gives this a manufacture date in 1943/44 . By 1945 the the clip design was changed again to a folded and flared design of which I have on in green and are the most common "early versions" found today. Oddly enough the 1930s versions are also common to find and have a shovel/scoop design to the clip....

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1943 ad showing the rounded rolled clip end....
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1944 ad showing the round rolled clip end...
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ausreenactor

Well-Known Member
Just snaffled a rare KG Luke US Visor Eagle. Will pop it on the recent Khaki/OD DD Crusher. Missed a couple in recent months that both got snapped up on the same day. Was watching them for almost a year on my EBay watchlist. Both of those were over $100 with BIN prices. Got this excellent example for under US$60. Stumbled on to it yesterday.. More of that Indian dude's karma?

Enjoy...

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Happy, happy, happy....
 

kirova

Well-Known Member
Just snaffled a rare KG Luke US Visor Eagle. Will pop it on the recent Khaki/OD DD Crusher. Missed a couple in recent months that both got snapped up on the same day. Was watching them for almost a year on my EBay watchlist. Both of those were over $100 with BIN prices. Got this excellent example for under US$60. Stumbled on to it yesterday.. More of that Indian dude's karma?

Enjoy...

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Happy, happy, happy....

made in Melbourne? what the story behind that? (made for the US forces stationed here during WW2?)

edit: ok Google says KG Luke was a mint company in Melbourne that made coins and badges from the 30s til the 80s
 
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