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I don't think the $5 makes a huge difference: and this way, the designer has more chance that people will allow him to post the design into his portfolio.

I'm pretty sure he is not doing it for the money, but rather to get some experience and build up his portfolio.

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$5 out of $15 is 33.3% and $5 out of $20 is 25%

I'd say thats fairly significant.

It depends on the context; if you offered me 1 penny or 2 pennies, I really wouldn't care. (even though it's a 100% difference)

Yes, it does. On the other edge case, with really large amounts of money, the perceived value of a differences might be hard to grasp. It's hard to see a penny as worth anything, and it's also hard to really grasp the difference in value between a trillion dollars and 1.1 trillion dollars.

Since 5 dollars is a denomination of US bills I think it has a significant psychological weight to considering it's value (for anyone familiar with US currency). You think of $5 and you know what it is,what it's worth to you, what you'd spend it on.

This might be a hold over from handling cash, where that $5 spent on a service might be competing with your lunch or bus ticket. I suppose dealing increasingly with debit/credit cards in place of small cash transactions where it's "just $5 in your entire bank account" will likely lessen this effect.

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