American Civil War Cipher at auction
Ciphers were a regularly used if not entirely impenetrable coding system used by professional sleuthers until not too long ago at all. This example dates from the American Civil War, and was used by the Confederates.
Made by Francis Labarr, the entirely secret encoding device was stashed inside a book (very sneaky) titled Decoding Device CSA Secret Service (not very sneaky at all).
Cowans have put the auction estimate at $10,000-15,000 for the very rare piece.
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