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Cold War enthusiasts have a rare opportunity to purchase KGB devices at auction on Saturday. More than 400 items, from tiny cameras hidden in belt buckles to encoders to the poisoned parachute, are ready to be taken.
With our reporter in Los Angeles, Loic Bialat
The sale takes place in Los Angeles from 7 PM, but can be accessed online. The bulk of the sale comes from the KGB Museum in New York City, closed due to the pandemic. Several articles show a certain passion for Russian spies for hidden cameras. In cigarette packs – where you can smoke anywhere at that time – in handbags, and even in a ring or tie.
« There wasn’t much room to put in the movie. It is not the case with current digital technology where you can take as many photos as you want. You had to know who to target and what you wanted to achieve “” Says Cody Frederick, one of Julian’s Auctions, the home that organizes these auctions.
Cyanide false teeth coding machine and letters
These auctions are at the crossroads of history and popular culture. Also featured in the auction is a replica of the famous “Bulgarian umbrella” used to poison dissident author Georgy Markov in London in 1978. Or a false tooth of cyanide to kill himself.
But Cody Frederick’s favorite piece remains “Fialka,” a kind of typewriter for producing encrypted messages. “ This indicates the versatility of the time for an analog machine. I inserted a piece of paper inside, wrote your message and the device encoded it. Once delivered to whom it may concern, the person puts the same paper into his device that output the message that was decoded, He explains.
Bids for approximately 400 available materials could exceed $ 1 million.
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