That's not true. I have a German eBay account from May 2001 when we still had the DM. eBay was very popular back then and had a completely different feeling because it was mostly used by private individuals for selling their stuff instead of mostly professional merchants like it is today.

That was the forgers error. At first he claimed he bought it from the Red Cross in 2001 and didn'tmention how, then he claimed it was one of the first items he bought on ebay in 2003/2004 and didn't mention from whom he bought it, implying he bought it inlcuding the invoice.

Germany has always been a rather privacy conscious country.

Even now, I suspect if that badge fell into the hands of most Germans, they would either try to return it to it's owner or shred it on the basis that it's someone else's private data.