My work is throwing away a bunch of scissors as we are moving to a new building and just buying a whole bunch of new supplies. I am curious if the blades on those are usable material for anything useful. I tried to google it and all I really got was that most are a carbon steel (not super helpful) and typically have a coating to prevent rust (google states nickel/chrome but I am sure its on a per item basis).

We also have one or two of those old paper cutters with the giant blade. Think that is worth messing with as well? I hate to see so much metal getting tossed if it is something I can tinker with 

I’d do some cruising through the safety section on safe Crome removal, 

that stuff is pretty wicked to my understanding

There's no way to give you a meaningful answer on the scissors.  It's basically mystery steel unless you have a lot more information to supply.  Most "normal" size scissors would not interest me due to the "work to useful steel" ratio to do anything with them.

The big paper cutter is a different story entirely.  If those are not plated it's a fairly safe bet that there's good knife steel there if it's all one solid piece. If it looks like there is an insert or different color steel on the cutting edge then that might be the only high carbon steel present.  The older the cutter the more likely it is to be good forging material.   If I had one of those I'd probably try to do something like an "expedient zombie killer" blade where you could still tell that it was from a paper cutter.

Recently I wanted to use a ball from a trailer hitch for a project but after reading about having to remove the Chrome I decided the metal wasn’t worth the effort and I looked up small mill balls instead 

I know the danger when dealing with chrome and I figured due to that and the overall small amount of metal it wouldn't be worth it but was curious none the less lol.

I am really tempted by that large paper cutter though. I will have to pop the blade off the table and give it a glance over.

If there's a chrome shop close by see what they charge to strip the chrome. 

Chrome is the final plating to protect the nickel from oxidizing and abrasion. The steps are, clean and polish the steel, copper plate it, nickel plate, polish to the desired luster and chrome plate. 

I made a custom bumper for my old Mitsubishi turbo diesel pickup and the old man at the chrome shop liked to talk, we got along well and I got a nice break having it done. 

Anyway, copper, nickel, chrome. The shiny silveriness is nickel.

Frosty The Lucky.

The paper cutter if useable has a far higher value in reselling than scavenging for steel.  

Can you cut kaowool with it?

Had to repaint the porch in the old house a couple years back. I wanted to use hillbilly chrome (spray paint) but the wife would not let me. Had to use the boring old gray.