Ranking the "Pips"

Do you know what a "pip" is?

There are quite a few definitions. Everything from the name of the main character in Dicken's classic Great Expectations, to the name for the little bulb that Lily of the Valley flowers come from, to the dots on a pair of dice.

But for our purposes, pips refer to the shoulder insignia indicating an officer's rank... In our case, the rank of a Soviet NKVD officer (which would be worn on the collar, not the shoulder.)

Ah, yes... we're still working on researching the uniforms that we're going to need for our feature film, Under Jakob's Ladder. And that means we have to know what kind of pips to get, and how many...

For example, enlisted men wore triangles... junior officers wore squares... senior officers wore rectangles... and the big wigs wore diamonds. And do we need red or green?

We've been looking for reasonably-priced pips on ebay. There seem to be a lot of Star Trek pips for sale. Not very many Soviet-style pips.

If we go with the Star Trek ones, do you think anyone will notice?!!!