Miter guide for cutting into pennies ???

[h~moto]

This one has me baffled. I found this item at a yard sale of mostly tools. The seller was trying to clear out his garage. I found the item in the back of the garage and when I split the two halves apart I saw the penny inside. It was a wheat penny so I put it in my pile of stuff to buy. After my purchase I checked the date on the penny and it was 1919. My only guess is that it is for making miter cuts into a penny but I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.

 

[RTM]

Jewelry project? How young was the seller? Etsy material?

 

[4xdog]

Jig for some sort of magic trick coin?

 

[h~moto]

Jewelry project? How young was the seller? Etsy material?

Seller probably in his twenties. Might have been his parents stuff. Not really any craft stuff there. Tools were mostly `60's and newer.

 

[4xdog]

The width of those miter guides seems pretty large for any sort of precision. I'd have expected more like a jeweler's saw-width for anything that needed it to look like a penny when done. This seems too coarse.

 

[The Cobbler]

looks home made & not hardened so it's use would have been very limited before it wallowed out.

 

[slowtwitch73]

Maybe for this?

https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwiVr6vk36X5AhUEFq0GHSGxBFsYABABGgJwdg&sig=AOD64_2i2CbJbRec2381gNMfJ3XWdzzsTQ&adurl&ctype=5&ved=2ahUKEwiM3p_k36X5AhXAKjQIHY2SDigQvhd6BAgBEFM