From Bill's Blog: Merits of replacing bronze participation medals

[BrianT103]

I think that the pin idea is a great way to cut costs within the FIRST community because it still awards team members for a good well done even if their team did not "place". However, I think the trophies from this past year should be restored to their old sizes. In general, I believe that their are better ways to cut costs, it seems like transistioning from medallions to pins is such a minute change that it would have little impact on the cost for FIRST (it may save a couple of a million dollars but in the whole grand scheme of things it really isn't that much). In general I feel as though there are "bigger fish to fry". Issues such as field components and KoP components, game rules (i.e. using last year's kit frame) need to be modified if FIRST wants to make a larger impact on the affordability of FIRST. It seems as though FIRST has it's "expensive" years and its "inexpensive" years, between the new control system and the playing field, 2009 was perhaps the most expensive year of all for FRC teams.