Quote:
Originally Posted by Madison
That would be fine and, in such a case, I don't think it's too much to expect that FIRST or Bill added, "Savings here will offset escalating costs elsewhere." More detail would be nice, but it's certainly not necessary.
|
Indeed, some measure of scale would be beneficial. If FIRST paid the price we pay ($12, as I recall from the order form that seems to have been taken offline) for each of those medals, and each of the 1,677 teams that competed received a box of 25, we're into a half-million dollars in medals ignoring the cost of trucking all of those boxes all over the continent (and beyond, in a few cases). That said, I would be shocked if FIRST was paying that (read on).
Now, since I don't know FIRST's medal supplier, we'll have to approximate. A bit of Google work seems to indicate that custom medals of the size (3", by my measurement) and quantity FRC used this year would run anywhere from $2 to $4. Similar Googling suggests that really nice pins in similar quantity come in around $0.75 to $1, depending on the size FIRST settled on.
If FIRST had ordered for 1,700 teams, a $1 drop in unit price would be a $42,500 swing. Total FRC operating expenses for FY08 (according to
their financials (PDF link)) were $20,558,122. Cutting $42,500 out of that would be approximately a 0.2% reduction in expenses.
To emphasize,
every figure other than the one taken from FIRST's financial statement is an educated guess on my part. Draw from this what you will.