Originally Posted by supcom
Look at it this way. If you get a cheap bike out of the trash for nothing and put $50 into it, you have a $50 bike. If you get a nicer bike for $30 at a thrift store and put $50 (a low figure from my experience) into it, you have an $80 bike.
A Varsity may not be the best bike in it's class, but a $50 bike is a cheaper ride than a $80 bike.
Besides, most of the parts you buy for the cheap bike can be swapped over to a nicer bike in the furure should one come along.
You've got to be pretty hard up or pretty far away from civilization to consider a free Varsity to be a reasonable substitute for a $10 Bianchi.
Old Varsities might make sense in the poorest parts of the third world where "bomb proof" is a literal requirement for the primary means of cheap transport, but outside that context I don't buy that restoration makes any sense. There are better bikes at a similar cost.
Even an old Peugeot U0-8 is a better project.