After poking around a bit (and finding that Inline::C is broken on my nearest installation) I found this, which seems to do something similar to what I want. Is it right? I'm playing with toys I don't fully understand. 
 use B 'svref_2object';
 my $objref = {};
 my $another = $objref;
 print svref_2object($objref)->REFCNT;

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This will print 2, as expected.

In reply to Re^2: Reference Count of a Non-Scalar by Anonymous Monk
in thread Reference Count of a Non-Scalar by bbfu

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