I found this buried in my garden. It’s steel, with some flecks of galvanization still visible here and there. Definitely stamped from sheet stock originally, the ring is welded, and it’s especially interesting to me that the right “foot” of the little “table” cutout is narrower than the left one, as if it’s keyed to connect to something in a single direction.

Ideas so far:

  • livestock tag (we live near ooold stockyards)
  • cremains tag (spooky)
  • key fob/id (but why the welded ring?)

Does anyone know what it really is?

Edit: in retrospect maybe this isn’t the right community for this? I’m not sure “what is this thing” qualifies as open ended, but I also really want to know the answer.

  • creek@lemmy.ml
    4·
    2 years ago

    I don’t know what it is, but polish it up, and it would probably make a cool keychain bottle opener.

    • nickajeglin@lemmy.oneOP
      5·
      2 years ago

      Ah cool thanks! Do you know what the cutout mates up with? I see in your screenshots that they’re all keyed various ways, I’m guessing they went into some kind of punch machine or something along those lines?

      Edit: best I found is from here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US1859307

      To facilitate the reassembly of the articles in customers groups, tag holders are provided, and to make confusion impossible, these holders are provided with characteristic admittance means, the tags having similar characteristic admittance means so that only-the tags of a certain number (and therefore of 'a certain customer) may be assembled on the holder having that number.

      Makes it sound like there was a sort of rail that matched the cutout to mistake proof putting one person’s tagged clothes bags back together after they were laundered.

      • em2@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 years ago

        Good find. I kept noticing different patent numbers on them and was a little confused, since the safety pin has its own patent and was created before these things. To further my confusion, I also found this page which shows a key attached to the pin.

        Very interesting rabbit hole!

  • subtex@lemmy.ml
    1·
    2 years ago

    You should try posting it to the “What is this thing” community.

    I can’t figure out a way to link to a community from within the jerboa app, but the web url for it is:

    https://lemmy.ml/c/whatisthisthing

    I wish it was like reddit where I could just type:

    /c/whatisthisthing

    And it would link to the local community. Oh well.

    Good luck!

    • Evkob@lemmy.ca
      3·
      2 years ago

      There actually doesn’t even seem to be a way to subscribe to a new community on Jerboa.

      But yeah, I’m no software expert but I imagine implementing a way to automatically direct someone to a community on their own instance by say typing “[email protected]”. Right now I mostly see people linking directly to instance where the community is hosted, which is not user-friendly, might overload servers, and defeats the purpose of federation. Hopefully something will be implemented soon.

      • nickajeglin@lemmy.oneOP
        2·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, it’s a little odd. On the desktop site, I can search “https://lemmy.ml/c/whatisthisthing” or “[email protected]”, then I get no results, wait about 2 minutes, search again, and it’ll pop up so I can join it. On Jerboa, I can search and search and it never opens.

        If a community is already on your instance though, I think you can open the sidebar and subscribe from there.

    • nickajeglin@lemmy.oneOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      I didn’t realize there was one, thanks! I just figured out how to subscribe to external communities earlier today, so the link will get me there.

    • nickajeglin@lemmy.oneOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      I did try a reverse search on Google, but it only gave me padlocks for some reason. Another poster found it though, thanks.