I remember seeing these alligator shears in scrap yards as well. I was always impressed by how easily they bit various flatbar and bar stock scrap to length when I was buying it. Of course, there was some loss of stock on the pieces I took with me due to the distortion from the alligator shear.
In 1973-4, I used to frequent the scrap yard in New London, CT of the Calamari Brothers (yep, their name means "squid" in Italian, appropriate for guys who got their tentacles on all sorts of machinery and scrap). A fellow named Tony Muscarella was the apparent yard boss. Tony, on learning I was a mechanical engineer, asked me to take a look at the scrap metal baler in the yard. It moved in a kind of arthritic fashion, and the men in the yard had taken to beating on the platens of the baler with heavy sledges to "help it along". Tony opened a shed adjacent to the baler and turned me loose to see what I could find out. The baler looked to date from the 1930's or earlier and was built by Logemann Brothers, Inc of Milwaukee, WI. It predated compact hydraulic pumps and compact hydraulic system components. The hydraulic pump for this monster was a triplex (or maybe quadruplex, my memory is a bit cloudy on this point) "power pump". It had an exposed crankshaft and open gearing to drive it. The piping was all steel with screwed or flanged joints. The valve bank for the baler rams was in the shed with the pump, and was worked by compressed air from control valves in the baler operator's little shanty (made of corrugated steel and whatnot from the yard). The baler operator's valves looked about like what would be found on an air-over-hydraulic garage lift. A centrifuge for purifying the hydraulic oil was mounted on a wall shelf and hard piped into the pump circuit.
I had Tony cycle the baler while I watched things in the shed. Learning nothing from that, I had him shut off the pump motor and stand by the disconnect as my protection against it being started while I poked around. I checked the oil level in the sump tank, and determined the gauge cocks were clogged. I took them apart, and ran a piece of wire thru to clear the sludge and crud, letting oil/water shoot out the bottom gauge cock to clear it. I got the gauge glass rodded out with a piece of wire and a piece of a rag, and got the gauge glass back together and working. This showed plenty of what looked more like milky coffee. I drained some oil from the sump tank on the system and confirmed that all the oil in the tank was the color of coffee with a lot of milk in it. I told Tony there was lots of water mixed in with the oil, and asked if and when they ever ran the oil thru the centrifuge. He had never seen it used.
Since the oil in the sump tank was stirred up, there was no way to simply drain off the water at that time. I decided the arthritic movements of the rams were likely due to air getting into the system. Tony got some tools and a drop light and we got busy checking every packing gland on the pump pistons and valves. Most had been socked up tight to the point the packings were solidly compressed. We pulled some of the hard packing out, and some was just too solidly compressed, nor did they have a corkscrew type of packing puller.
Tony got some rolls of square braided packing from a shelf. We fit new packing rings, cutting it with our jack knives. With the new packings installed, I had Tony cycle the baler. It moved a bit better. We monkeyed around with the centrifuge (Barrett, I think was the mfr) and I tried to get it going to process the oil. I had never started an oil centrifuge or serviced one at that point of my career, so we accomplished nothing. I told Tony to ask the management about changing the oil, and he replied with some insights as to the thinking of the management.
We tinkered and poked around a bit more, and the baler seemed to work a little better. Tony drove a 1950's pickup with the headboard from an old iron bedstead as his front grill/brush guard. It even has the two brass balls as finials on the bedposts. He invited me to follow him to his house. This had a collection of even more "finds" from the junkyard- lines of hit-n-miss engines, anvils, vises, old tools, chains, and cast iron pedestals from kitchen "range boilers" with cut down "sidearm" hot water tanks made planters. A large vegetable garden patch was fenced with even more stuff from the junkyard- old pipe with els and tees, sections of expanded steel mesh from factory partitions, old handrailings with "ball" type fittings, and when he ran out of anything else, box-springs from beds were stood on end and wired together side by side. A pig pen was similarly fenced. More old pipe and whatnot supported a grape arbor. Chickens and goats were roaming on their own. Tony was not parting with any of the treasures. He invited me to a late lunch which his wife served us, along with a few tumblers of home-made wine. I had made a friend in Calamari Brothers' junkyard. That yard is long gone, and I believe some fancy condos and a convention center and hotel occupy that neighborhood.
Thinking back to that Logemann Brothers baler is quite a study in how quickly and far industrial hydraulics evolved. I suspect WWII had a lot to do with it.
A Logemann Brothers 1930's baler would be a nice companion piece to the alligator shear. Neither one has any practical value to most of us, but definitely a couple of real industrial artifacts. How many people give a thought to the workings of a scrap yard (now they call them "recyclers" or somesuch) ? The days of being turned loose to pick over a scrapyard are also in the distant past due to liability issues and the fact most scrap is quickly loaded out or "processed" on side (shredded).
Calamari Brothers' name was quite apt for their line of business and their scrap yard. In the yard, operators ran ancient lattice boom cranes with electromagnets or clam buckets. This was in the pre-hydraulic excavator days. The cranes were ancient, on steel (crawlers), and if there ever was a load chart, it was long gone. The operators grappled up scrap with the cranes and dropped it into the piles. The exception was any machinery or other equipment which might be re-usable/salable as it was. This was handled with front end loaders with forks or a chain on the bucket. Like the squid, the cranes threw out their tentacles and grabbed onto the scrap and pulled it in. Tony Muscarella and his breed are likely long gone as well.
Alligator shears and balers in modern scrap yards are nowhere near as dramatic and open in their workings, using compact hydraulics and electrohydraulic control valves. The alligator shear in this thread is obviously a survivor. Scrap steel is mostly "processed" in huge shredders, so the need for alligator shears and balers is probably quite small nowadays.
The bigger question to the OP is what he plans to do with the alligator shear ? Keeping piles of old pipe and rebar around to demonstrate it's voracious appetite might be about it.