What is this thing?

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Metal tag buried in my garden? (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The shape of the cutout almost reminds me of a bottle opener. What are the dimensions we’re dealing with?

I don’t think it would necessarily be a good bottle opener. But the mismatched sizes of the “feet” could mean it was hand made, possibly by an amateur? School shop project?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I posted a different thread, and someone almost immediately found it with a reverse image search.

It's a military laundry key tag. It connects to a huge safety pin that hooks to your mesh laundry bag. The cutout is related to some sort of automatic sorting mechanism, there's a matching rail that it goes onto to make sure that all of one person's bags end up together. I'm still hunting for more info on that machine because it sounds really cool.