Posted 9 years ago
hotairfan
(388 items)
posted are a few cigar box openers. Merchants selling cigars used them to open up the cigar box that was held shut by a little nail. You wedged the opener under the lid (close to the nail head) and pried the lid open to expose the cigars. Often the tools also furnishes a little hammer that was part of the tool to and used to hammer the lid closed after the patron bought a cigar. This helped to keep the product fresh.
Sometimes they had a bottle opener on the opposite end to open "pop" bottles for their customers.
I believe the two hatchet-shaped pieces are candy "hammers".
Hi UncleRon, Your possibly correct on the larger Hammer style tool, I have seen the smaller style hammer in collector books and listed as cigar store cigar box opener