*FOO{THING} syntax works on typeglobs

Ah, that's what I was missing. I knew there was a simple explanation! Thanks for your reply. For further reinforcement of your point:

$ perl -le 'open my $fh, "file"; print $fh;'
GLOB(0x814cc20)
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And to show some symmetry with the package variable variety of typeglob:

open FOO,    "file"; print ref \*FOO; # prints GLOB
open my $fh, "file"; print ref \*$fh; # prints GLOB
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