They weren’t tools of some secret trade, nor medical instruments, nor anything dangerous. They were humble, elegant nutcrackers and picks from the 1940s and 1950s, made for prying stubborn walnuts, pecans, and especially chestnuts from their shells. Once, they would have sat proudly on coffee tables beside wooden bowls, passed from hand to hand as families talked late into winter evenings.

In that moment of recognition, the discovery stopped being about “mysterious metal sticks” and became a doorway into his grandparents’ lives: the clink of shells in a bowl, the smell of roasted nuts, the low murmur of conversation around a crowded table. Objects like these remind us that the smallest things can carry entire generations inside them, waiting quietly in a box until someone cares enough to ask what they were really for.