M-35 DD Kriegsmarine

[JuanS]

Hi kenny

What Perry is saying about layered decal is shown in this picture. The national shield was printeted i n layers been white the bottom layer. So you would expest to see some white if the scratch did not went all over all the layers.
I find disturbing that the fakers are very good using lacker on the decals. The use of lacker is very good in your decals IMO.

Juan

[Kenny Suit]

KM Eagle decal

Thanks to everyone for your observations and opinions about the National Colors decal and helmet paint.

But what about the Eagle decal? I'm not reading many comments about it.

Remember that I purchased this helmet in 1998, and that the KM eagle has a very high metallic content.

Were fakes being produced in 1998 with the shiny metallic eagle? At the time, I hadn't seen any.

In other ways as well, this decal closely resembles known originals I've seen. But with the frequent discussion on this forum about "variant" decals (see, for instance, the current thread about the DD M-16 army helmet), it's differences from the KM eagles I've seen seem pretty minute.

Could this be an original KM eagle decal "married" to a fake National Colors decal?

Leaving aside question of the originality of the KM eagle decal for the moment, overall I would say that I'm leaning towards the conclusion that the faker left the interior of the helmet alone, but "restored" only the exterior with new paint, accelerated rust, and new decals (or an old KM eagle newly applied).

The interior paint and liner look original (and untouched) to me. It's true that the exterior rust is of a slightly different quality than the interior rust. The exterior paint color, however, is pretty close (if not an exact match) to the interior paint.

So, since we're all of the opinion that this helmet has been tampered with in one way or another, what do you recommend that I do with it? I don't want to keep it in my collection, but I don't want to sell it to someone who will turn around and dupe another collector, either.

[Stephan Wahl]

I think the rip off may be in the fact that it's not a "Double Decal" This alone brings the academic value down from, what, $9,000 to only $1,200.