Pridnestrovie Lapel Pins.

[Greg Collins]

Picked up three lapel pins/badges from Pridnestrovie recently. All have an official connotation as they were/are given to government officials. The pin at the top left is to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of Pridnestrovie and the pin below that is to commemorate the 15th Anniversary. The pin to the right is for Central Management of Ministry of Internal Affairs PMR and has a deep green transparent enamel on the shield. Just as a reminder, the PMR on the pins is an abbreviation for Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica. The odd thing here is that both flags contain the hammer and sickle, while the official country flag does not.

A dime (US 0.10) is included to give an idea of size. The backs for the flags is a flat texture while the shield is a reverse image. All use a "military clutch" to secure. The only mint mark I can find is on the back of the 10 year flag and, I believe, is from the Leningrad MD.

[deValcourt]

I definitely like the MVD badge and the reverse of the two flag pins is very interesting. As for the H&S, I noticed that too on several badges from the region dealing with law enforcement. I would at first, guess they were surplus, but then you see dates like 2002 or some many years later than that. Perhaps Paul knows why they do this...

Phillip

[Greg Collins]

Phil,

With regard to the badges, they most often show the official PMR Coat-of-Arms which does have the hammer and sickle. I've attached an image of it.

Now, about the flag... officially, the flag no longer has the hammer and sickle. Just a red flag with a horizontal green stripe in the center. Having said that, I have noticed that the old flag containing the hammer and sickle (Moldavian SSR) seems to appear more regularly these days- and not attached to an ideology, per se. It may be because this just happens to be the flag that is available (plenty of old flags around) or it may be the flag that the people are more comfortable with. Who knows? Also, I'm not entirely sure when the hammer and sickle was officially dropped from the flag; this may have been a fairly recent change (since 2007).

[Greg Collins]

Acquired this pin today... for a Veteran of the Special Forces (Police Spetsnaz or SWAT-type), Dneister. It's made of a heavy white alloy and is quite shiny- difficult to photograph. Military clutch-type back.