The helmet was discovered in 1926 on a grassland by a farmer's child named Traian Simion who was herding sheep in the village of Poiana Coțofenești (now part of Vărbilău commune), Prahova County, Romania, at a location called "Vârful Fundăturii"[citation needed].

At some time, a Ploiești merchant by the name of Ion (or Jean) Marinescu-Moreanu bought the helmet, including the detached upper part,[clarification needed] for the sum of 30,000 lei, equivalent to up to 30 years' income for the farmer.

[8] The pair of "Voracious Beasts" on the Coțofenești neck-guard occupy a lower register along with a similar creature deprived of a victim’s leg[clarification needed] .

Phoenicia was probably the intermediary for its transferral to Italy and around the Adriatic, but the motif must also have traveled through Asia Minor to appear in a North Thracian idiom[clarification needed] not only on the Coțofenești neck-guard but also in high relief on the base of the Aghighiol beakers, named after the village near the Danube Delta in eastern Romania where they were found.

[9] The Thracian gold and silversmiths who manufactured the objects were aware of other contemporary art styles—those of Scythia, Greece, northeast Italy, and what is now modern Slovenia were known through trade, travel and meetings and they adapted conventions of representation suitable for their own purposes.

[clarification needed][10] On January 25, 2025, Dutch officials announced the helmet had been stolen from the Drents Museum in Assen, where it had been on loan, along with three golden Dacian bracelets.

[12] Its theft sparked criticism over the loan agreement in Romania,[13] and on 28 January, the Romanian minister of Culture Natalia Intotero fired the museum's director, Ernest Oberländer, saying that he had "failed to adequately protect the national heritage".

The comic strips "Din zori de istorie", published in late 1970s in "Cutezătorii" magazine, written by Vasile Mănuceanu and drawn by Albin Stănescu, also depicts the helmet with a flat top.