Camouflaged MKII Brit helmet

[Jerry B]

I met him once at a show years ago, he was admiring my watch and showed me his Rolex.....Believe it or not, that was also a fake.

Easy to believe LOL

[tinlid]

Well, if it is a fake, it's a bloody good one, which is worrying. There's just a couple of things that don't quite sit right, where normally there are quite a few things to set the alarm bells off.
£227 now.

[Jan]

Looks like the white paint was done over an already rusty surface :/

Best,

Jan

[pluto]

Here is a photo of the fake helmet I mentioned yesterday,they seem similar but not quite

[pluto]

The pattern on this was painted on a rusty surface about 10 years ago,scary innit?

[tinlid]

innit.
But what does show up on both, is the lack of wear around the rim.
It now means we have to pay attention to the smallest details on every hard to find/rare helmet that we see, which is a bit of a bummer.

[ynot]

Hi tony ,nice to see you've join the gold club mate this seller has a few nice items and a few bad one's but on the whole i would say his stock is good ,im familiar with him on the bay but im just wondering if you think these helmets are enhanced in house so to speak or is he innocently buying them in to sell on without realising or im i being a bit naive here
thanks james

thanks mate.

I'm afraid I never trust someone who constantly has sort after good stock however, if I could check items in the hand it might be different but I'd still ask for opinions if it came from this particular seller.

The Malta helmet is still at 227 GBP.

Tony

[pluto]

The guy sent me 6 photos of this helmet ,from the top ,sides and inside ,and the fact that the inside rim ,the paint was totally worn away but like Aaron said no wear on the outside and also on the bolt head the paint is 100% there,which to me also seems impossible but at least when I told him these facts he admitted that he done it himself, if he had left the bolt unpainted and rubbed some paint from the rim ,I would have probably bought it thinking that it's an original.

[FALLSCHIRMJAGER]

At first glance I liked that Malta cammo as well, but the more I looked at it, the more suspicious I became. The lack of any real wear to it is a big red flag for me, it is not as though these helmets were in an area where the owners sat out the war on a sun lounger! I would expect to see various levels/depth of damage on any combat helmet unless it belonged to a desk jockey. Thanks Pluto for posting that image of your mates faked helmet, just goes to show what I have been saying about wear/age patterns on these MKII's. Applying the same rules of thumb on these as I do any Third Reich combat helmets is a must these days. Leon.

[pluto]

You're welcome Leon, if you're a collector of German lids,it's an even bigger dilemma for you as they are much more expensive than the British ones,I do have an original german one ,given to me by a friend 35 odd years ago ,but in my opinion the characteristics of wear are different from the British ones ,firstly they do not have the stainless steel rim and secondly it seems that the colour of the rust is lighter on the German one than on the British maybe because of the manganese content in the British lid ,anyway I think I picked wrong time to start collecting ww2 lids again ,back in the 70's and 80's I didn't have to worry about fakes,when I got married I gave my collection away and kept only the german one,now that I'm retired I have started collecting again only to find that 70% of the helmets are fake, I now think I should have bought a harley instead