Vintage Mystery Tool: Nut and Seafood Picks

A friend recently inherited some vintage tools from his grandfather and wasn’t quite sure what they were. The answer? Mid-century nut picks, likely from the 1940s or 1950s — though they’re also commonly used today with seafood.

These tools serve two main purposes:

• Nut Picks: Used to extract the edible part of nuts after cracking the shell — especially useful with chestnuts, walnuts, and pecans.

• Seafood Picks: Often included in lobster or crab tool sets to retrieve meat from small, hard-to-reach areas.

Many households in the mid-20th century had a rustic wooden bowl — sometimes carved to look like a hollowed-out tree trunk — complete with holes to hold the picks and a central slot for the nutcracker.

Whether for nuts or shellfish, these picks are functional, nostalgic, and a neat reminder of classic table traditions.