Surgical scissors (medical liability premium)

$300 (1980s) / $600–700 (present) stainless steel scissors with cobalt-alloy brazed cutting edge, gold-plated handles, 100% hardness check. DeBakey color-preference anecdote. Used to motivate the sapphire/ruby marketing pitch in §5.p9.

[Tom holds up a pair of surgical scissors.] This is just a pair of scissors a surgeon might use to snip some part of the body or cut suture. Back in the 80s this was a $300 pair of scissors. They're probably six or seven hundred now. It's brazed on the surface with a cobalt alloy for excellent wear resistance and strength and maintains sharpness. Once you buy this pair of scissors you can send it back whenever it's dull and they will sharpen it for free and ship it back to you. Gold-plated handles, so you know this is one of the premium grades of stainless steel scissors. I used to help make stainless steel instruments like this. Every one of them's got a hardness indentation on it because they do a hundred percent check on the heat treatment hardness. It's better than your Fiskars scissors. I don't mean to knock Fiskars, but this is a better scissor.