Unidentified Unknown badges... Austro-Hungarian? Please help to ID

[nicco]

Hello everyone.

I have a question on two WW1 enameled button pin badges with years 1918 and 1917 and letters ''RG/GR'' and ''ŽG/GŽ'', which I've tried to identify like everywhere (colleagues, literature, internet forums), but without any success

I believe for some reasons (overall design and pin suspension system) it could be Austro-Hungarian (most probably Slavic area of the monarchy, note the Slavic letter ''Ž'' present in Czech, Slovak, Slovene & Croatian language...) but unfortunately, I still have no clue which could give me some indication of my assumption.

Badges are both 3 cm in diameter.

Any help with identification, or suggestion where is the best place to ID it, would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Rogi]

I think its Croatian, I've seen the ZG somewhere before but I can't recal where exactly :S

The only thing that springs to mind is Zagreb, which commonly uses ZG as its short form. I'll try to look through my notes

and let you know if I find something

Edited August 1, 2014 by Rogi

[nicco]

Thanks Rogi. Those could be Croatian, but judging from years 1918/1917, probably from WW1 period, when Croatia was still part of KuK Monarchy... Of course, those could be easily made after WW1...

And one small correction. If you think on initials on the second badge, those are not ''ZG'', but ''ŽG''. So I think direct connection to ''Zagreb'' is unlikely here...

One more ''creative'' assumption of mine - maybe those are some kind of personal WW1 (fallen?)soldier badges, with initials of their names...?? And different years... maybe years of their death in battle?? Although, on the other side, it's hard to belive it was easy and inexpensive to order ''personal'' minting, with different design and letters for each soldier...

[Rogi]

They look like association (minis) badges to me, but we'll keep on the search could be anything

I can't do the accent on my computer but there is a locomotive that used to run ŽG Ljubljana so try and search there

If it is WW1, Croatia started to march towards independence and the movement took hold after the war. You can still find minis and badges with full Croatian checkerboards (and nothing else) that date to around the war to after war period.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Rogi

[Gordon Craig]

nicco,

I searched the web for both sets of letters, and their associated years, but could find nothing. The only thing of note on the badges I found was that the leaves around the outside edges of the badges are identical so the two badges are obviously related.

Regards,

Gordon