Christies Late Roman helmet: 1 or 2?

[Urselius]

I have no particular conviction that the two helmets are authentic, I am merely making an assertion that the apparent quality of preservation is not a bar to authenticity.

Now you have raised it, the fact that the helmets are just what Late Roman armour afficionados would adore to be real is also no bar, in and of itself, to them being real.

To return to the Coppergate Helmet, before it was found the only Anglo-Saxon helmets in existence were the Benty Grange spangenhelm and the Sutton Hoo masked helmet. Surviving pictorial evidence from 7th-8th century objects - the Anglo-Saxon Franks Casket and one of the Pictish Aberlemno Stones - showed warriors in very distinctive helmets. They were rounded and rather like crash-helmets in shape and had very exaggeratedly long nasals. If you had asked an Anglo-Saxon scholar interested in miliary equipment what they would have given their eye teeth for it is an example of such a helmet. Then the Coppergate Helmet was found, exactly like the pictorial sources and in breathtaking condition.

Before the Benty Grange helmet was discovered Anglo-Saxonists had dismissed the descriptions in Beowulf of helmets with boar crests as being poetic licence. Now we have two boar-crested Anglo-Saxon helmets (Benty Grange and Pioneer).

Just because it appears to be too good to be true, it doesn't mean that it is too good to be true.