I say fake, looking at how beat up it is an it has lack of rust from viewing the pictures, By lack of rust I mean, it looks knocked around, and there isn't any paint that was actually knocked off, It looks like its been beaten painted then rusted. The other thing i don't like is the lack of pics, none of the inside, no real closeups of the seam, of any other parts of the heltmet. But for 40 bucks it'd make a neat isplay item regardless. FWIW