Ebay is a very popular place to purchase all sorts of German helmets.  Sometimes, one can find a great deal.  However, there are many greedy sellers hoping to make some extra cash by adding fake decals, camouflage, and liners to their helmets. Here are some hints in spotting fake helmets.

1.  Helmet Chinstraps: These are often missing on original german helmets. If one watches ebay sales, chinstraps alone sell for around $100 dollars.  To add this extra value to their helmets, many sellers add fake Eastern Europe produced chinstraps to their helmets. There is a long list of known fakes, so please visit german-helmets.com for a complete list before purchasing any german helmet with a chinstrap.  About half of the ones I see on ebay are fakes. If you recieve a helmet with a chinstrap that smells of leather or chemicals, return it if you can.  Leather will lose its scent after 60 years, and chemicals will mean that the chinstrap has been artificially aged.

2. Camouflage: German camouflaged helmets are very rare, particularly those of the "Normandy" or "Afrika Korps" variants.  Unlike chinstraps, camouflage is more dificult to distinguish as fake. In general, if it looks to good to be true, it is.  A perfectly camouflaged helmet, with no scratches or damage to the paint, is probably fake.  Chicken-wired helmets are extremely rare.  In general, beware of these helmets.  If the wire is not rusted to the helmet, or if it is not european-style zinc wire (doesn't rust), it is surely a fake.

3.  Decals: Probably the most popular way of faking a helmet, as it is easy to do, and it raises the value of the helmet considerably.  Make sure that the decal has a "metallic" look to it. Make sure that the decal fits the helmet.  M-35 helmets have two decals, a party shield and an eagle; M-40 helmets have just the eagle; and M-42 helmets have no decals at all. Also, be careful, certain German symbols are banned on ebay, and auctions will be closed by the server if these symbols appear in photos.

4. Liners: Follow many of the rules of spotting fake chinstraps.  Also, the liner should have holes on the fingers, but not in the forehead area.

5. "Rare" helmets: The most common helmets to fake are Waffen-SS helmets and Fallschirmjager helmets.  Almost all helmets of these types on ebay are fake.  Also, original helmet covers are extremely rare and should be avoided in most cases.  Do not purchase black helmets on ebay.  These are almost all fakes, as black helmets were not made after 1939

I hope this info helps.

Hank