A man had five pieces of chain, each made up of three links, figure below. He wanted to join the five pieces together to make a big chain of fifteen links and went to a blacksmith to see how much it would cost. "Well," said the blacksmith, "I will charge you 50 cents for cutting a link and 1.00 for welding a link. Any bending that is required is free." Given those prices, what is the smallest amount of money for which the job could be done? Note: In a chain, each link is connected to one or two other links.

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