I recently saw one of these being used by a vehicle examiner who told me that he could tell by the readings the thickness of paint as to whether it was the original coat or had been re-sprayed (ie: had been in an accident).
The gauge he had was similar to the one shown on this link;
when i worked for mazda qld many years ago they had problems with some burgundy ??? coloured veh
when they came into the south brisbane workshop for evaluation they used a similar device
it measured the thickness of the paint by the amount of resistance to a magnet
they could tell if it was still original paint or if it had been resprayed by this thickness
the one in the link appears to be a muched improved type
brian