Hi Brian:
Welcome to the pickelhaubes forum. We have been fellow contributors at Wehrmacht Awards, where I post under the name "epsomgreen."
The sweatband embossed
Depaheg Patent indicates the helmet body and visors are made of Vulkanfiber, a proto-plastic Ersatz material. For comparison, these are pictures of a wartime
Depaheg Bavarian from my collection:
While I like the eBay helmet, it bears pointing out that very convincing electroformed general officer Wappens exist. The following example is manufactured by Der Kammerbullle:
http://www.kammerbulle.de.vu/
As one can see, it would take very little to upgrade my helmet to be something it never was.
Courtesy of the eBay photos, the Wappen is secured by thin split wires, and this raises a very genuine red flag. Customarily, one would expect to see threaded fasteners secured by squared nuts. While there is a precedent for the occasional use of split brads to secure officer helmet Wappen, I would never bid on the eBay listing based solely on the information at hand.
"I tell the wearersname to the buyer !" seems unnecessarily mysterious, and, with no PayPal and no recourse, I regard this item as a true
caveat emptor. It will be interesting to see if anyone nibbles at the bait.
Thanks for posting.
Chas.
