A Valuable Lesson

 is a quest in Fallout: New Vegas.

Quick walkthrough
After giving Festus at least 50 Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle caps and listening to the Sunset Sarsaparilla story you can ask Festus for the real prize to which he sends you to the vault. The way is blocked so you have to go to the first floor and to the West of that floor you can find a room with a safe. Under that safe is a hole through which you must go to reach the door to the vault. Inside lies your reward.

Detailed walkthrough
After finding at least 50 Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle caps the player can receive their prize from Festus which is, amusingly, the honor of listening to the real story of how Sunset Sarsaparilla came to be. Also, any Star caps over 50 are simply converted into bottle caps and given back to you. If you read between the lines you can see that the man who "invented" the drink actually had the true inventor killed and stole the invention from him. If you ask about the real prize he tells you that due to legal constraints the main prize had been removed and another is offered that should be enough. This triggers the quest A Valuable Lesson which instructs you to go to the Sunset Sarsaparilla vault to collect your prize. Access is made through the top floor through a hole in front of a safe and leads to a lower room which is filled with Sunset Sarsaparilla deputy badges.

Inside that room the prize is about 1500 bottle caps (in 13 crates, each averaging about 100 caps) -- this might be scaled with player level; at level 30, this editor found 1750 caps. Also there are 319 Sunset Sarsaparilla deputy badges (weightless and worthless - if you can't find them all pull the crates off the top shelves). Also, in the corner we can find Allen Marks, a holotape and Pew Pew, a unique laser pistol. If you move him you can also take his Sunset Sarsaparilla deputy badge which simply falls off his chest. The holotape (which ends the quest when you pick it up,) reveals that he was a murderer, and a computer found in the bottling area of the building seems to reveal the moment Marks broke into the factory, indicating that several robots had been damaged but also that the intruder had been wounded in the process. According to his recording holotape, he apparently shot himself in the head to prevent death by suffocation as the vault was completely airtight. For more details about him and his demise see Allen Marks.