- $100 firm budget to purchase a C&V bicycle.
Is that $100 USD or CND? or Australian dollars, or Eurals, or Yen or...
use the fair market value of the item.
Fair value, as defined by me in Thunder Bay, or Dave in Duluth, or Helen in Troy(just horsing around), or Peter in Perth, or Riccardo in Rome, or Lenard in London or anyone else anywhere else?
The point is we try to do an apples to apples comparison, but we are not all working with apples. Why not allow contestants to just build and present. Then, after a defined amount of time (yup time is apples to apples for everyone) and after allowing others to comment on the builds, report what they actually spent? And...
...how they(we) managed to not spend. That information would be interesting and entertaining as well as valuable, assuming some decent cost savings idea floated to the surface.
Don't penalize contestants for having a supply of stuff on hand. They(we) got that stuff fair and square and, for many of us, can't even begin to guess what the actual cost was then or is today(I don't care who thinks they know what this or that is worth - as often as not, they or we are wrong). Do I add what my time is worth? At close to 70 years old, time, for me, is viewed as extremely valuable. When I was working, there were times I got paid close to three hundred dollars (CND) an hour(not many times but it did happen, now and again). And when I was sixteen, time meant nothing and was not even considered in my value equations.
Anyway, can't sleep and thought I would add my two cents (Canadian cents/sense) to the mix:-)