>>59133082
I don't need a Water-type until Fuscia at best

>>59133082
500 for earlier Gyarados access is a bargain, he kicks so much ass

>>59133082
>early access to a strong pokémon for the price of two-and-a-half poké balls or less than a great ball
It's not necessary, but it's also not the rip-off the game wants you to think it is.

>>59133082
>500p to solve misty and every gym except surge (enter: Nidoking) and punk most of the elite 4 because the sooner you start getting stat exp the better
Yeah not a bad deal

>>59133082
>Switchgrind
I calculated this once. It's much faster to buy Magikarp and put it in the daycare. Takes around 40 minutes of walking laps around Route 5 to get it to level 19, then use a Rare Candy.
By comparison, to get the most experience out of switchgrinding, every Pokémon takes around 30-40 seconds with animations off, if you're doing optimal inputs and you get OHKOs every time. Even if you battle every trainer between Mt. Moon and Route 25, you still won't get Magikarp to Level 19, so you have to make up the difference with wild Pokémon. Averagely, you get around 50 Exp per wild battle. All told, switchgrinding takes about 2 hours; in that time on a file where you put Magikarp in the daycare, you could have already gotten to Celadon.

>>59133741
How much is that in daycare fees, and how much of that walking would be covered by finishing Vermilion?

>>59133942
Daycare fees are 100 + (100 x Levels Gained)
Magikarp starts at Level 5, you'd ideally end at Level 19.
It takes 8417 steps to get Magikarp to Level 19, which is like 100 or so laps of Route 5. In my original calc, I did enough laps to the point where 1 average wild battle would be enough to evolve Magikarp, but I soon realised that there was a Rare Candy the player could have by then. And even as I type this, I realise there's TWO you can get by then, so it's even quicker than that (7134 steps to Level 18). Or three in FRLG, just by going through the Underground Path and finding the hidden one on the Route 6 side, reducing that down to 5985 steps. But by that point, you might as well go get the VS Seeker and grind money while you're at it.
I'm also directly responding to the problem posed in the OP pic, where the tradeoff is then to wait UNTIL getting the Old Rod instead of just buying Magikarp. And I'm also assuming that any player posed that problem would want to have Magikarp evolve as early and as quickly as possible.