The significance of creating a masterwork was always great.
Though no one was able to offer a truly precise definition of a masterwork, those who lived for their craft were always able to recognize the pinnacle of what an object could be. The appreciation that mech designers and other knowledgeable people exhibited towards works of supreme quality could not easily be passed on to those who lacked the requisite depth.
In fact, whether a masterwork actually performed substantially better than a more 'normal' copy was still a hotly-debated question. Too many people who did not understand anything about craftsmanship could not fathom why the value of a masterwork copy was a hundred, a thousand and in some ridiculous cases even a million times more expensive than a normal version of the product!
