• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What's the most expensive thing you ever broke?

Status
Not open for further replies.
H

Hollywood

Banned
I remember on TechTV once this guy was displaying this old thing made by Thomas Jefferson, some type of film and was talking about how fragile it was and his hands were all shaking and it just disintegrated on the air and he was like 'shit. One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. :lol

Most expensive thing you broke? I haven't really broke anything that expensive, just normal replacable stuff.
 
T

Tarazet

Member
This thread needs more descriptions.

Mom tells me that I ruined a VCR by sticking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into it when I was 2.
 
G

Gek54

Junior Member
Um one time....wait, what is the statute of limitations in Texas? Err does Federal have any?
 
M

miyuru

Member
Hollywood said:
I remember on TechTV once this guy was displaying this old thing made by Thomas Jefferson, some type of film and was talking about how fragile it was and his hands were all shaking and it just disintegrated on the air and he was like 'shit. One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. :lol

Most expensive thing you broke? I haven't really broke anything that expensive, just normal replacable stuff.
Click to expand...

:lol I was just about to post this upon reading the thread title! I totally remember that clip, he said "there's only one of these in the world" or something to that effect before it just split in his hands.

"Oh...shi..."

:lol!!
 
D

Drensch

Member
Back in 1986 or so my family replaced an old Sony tv. We had had the new tv for a year or so when I "broke it". I had this this plastic stick that had a large magnet in it, the magnet was about half the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Anyways I was watching cartoons and Thundercats was starting. I was imitating the part where Lion-O whips out the sword of Thundera and says "thunder, Thunder, thundercats HOOOooooo!" And all of a sudden the tv "explodes". The magnet was gone form the end of my stick, and we never found it. The crt had bubbled outward. There was no other damage to the tv and we couldn't really explain what had happened. Based on the way the tv looked there was no way the magnet actually hit the screen, it looked like something had come out of the tv rather than crashed through it. There wasn't a hole, but the glass bubbled outwards in one spot. Weird as hell. The only conclusion we came to is that the magnet must have passed in front of the crt at speed and caused some weird field issue. Like I said, the magnet was never found.
 
D

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
miyuru said:
:lol I was just about to post this upon reading the thread title! I totally remember that clip, he said "there's only one of these in the world" or something to that effect before it just split in his hands.

"Oh...shi..."

:lol!!
Click to expand...
No no, it was "...oh fu.....shit!"
 
L

Liono

Member
A family member broke a brand new $300 dollar 27" Sharp flat-screen tv when we were moving. We were tempted to take it back to bestbuy with the "it was like that when we got it" excuse, but good morals won in the end. The lesson: don't buy TVs when moving, and don't try to lift them without help. At the very least we got the Panasonic next time, a better set.
 
G

Gattsu25

Banned
While moving here from NY my dad and mom got in an argument while I was helping my dad move our 30 or so inch TV into the moving truck...when my mom goes inside my dad completely lets go of the fucking thing and the screen shatters when it hits the ground and he then blames the shit on me and punches me in the side of my head

I didn't miss him when they got divorced



most expensive thing that I honestly broke was a BMW windshield with a baseball (accident)
 
S

Scrow

Still Tagged Accordingly
well crap... just about every humorous or witty reply i could've posted has already been taken :(
 
O

Odoul

Member
I accidentally put a HUGE scratch in a $2000 face plate. It was one of three and it's pretty much unusable now.
 
S

Shogmaster

Member
Canon Fiery color copier at a summer co-op circa 1991 (?). I believe it was a $50,000 device at the time. We (it was a bunch of us co-ops that did it) loaded the wrong kind of color toner to the machine when it ran out of magenta. Apparently we poured in the toner for the Xerox color copier, which uses different formulation. X_x

We never fessed up to the folks at the design studio (Fitch design in Columbus Ohio). They were like "why is this thing not working?!?" and we were like mumbling "Idunknow?" back, all innocent like. :lol
 
S

Sai

Member
miyuru said:
:lol I was just about to post this upon reading the thread title! I totally remember that clip, he said "there's only one of these in the world" or something to that effect before it just split in his hands.

"Oh...shi..."

:lol!!
Click to expand...
Anybody have a clip of this?

Oh, and I'd also have to say my iPod. Somehow the scroll wheel got fucked up. Took it to Best Buy and they fixed it in less than a week though.
 
T

tedtropy

$50/hour, but no kissing on the lips and colors must be pre-separated
The most obvious answer would be my first car, but my insurance fixed that so I'm not sure if it qualifies. Back when the Geforce4 TI4200 was still a pretty good card I attempted to replace its stock cooler with a quieter one and wound up frying the card. That sucker wasn't cheap. I dropped a really high-end Aiwa portable CD player like a week after I had it several years back. Hmm, I've gone through a fair share of moderately price technology that was either broken as a result of my trying to 'tweak' it or by just plain dropping it. Sometimes you kind of stop, look back, and wonder how much money you'd have in savings today if you hadn't blown it on crap you really, really didn't need and likely stopped using or broke...
 
B

bjork

Member
If a car counts, then I guess that might be it... I hit a sheep in my Honda and did like $3700 in damage to the front end (split the radiator, busted the hood, bumper, and both front fenders, etc), and also killed the sheep :(

But if a car doesn't count, I guess it would be when I was working at Wal-Mart seven or eight years ago... I was driving a forklift in the back room, and I was supposed to pick a pallet up from this stack of pallets. So I forget what happened, but instead of running the forks into the slots on the pallet, I ran them into the merchandise... gigantic glass pickle jars.

So I call the night crew boss and ask him what to do, and he says to just pull the forks out, and make a break for it. I pull the forks out, and the weight of the jars on top (in addition to the two pallets on top of the pickle pallet) made the entire stack collapse. So the pickle jars all fell and broke, sending pickles and pickle juice everywhere, and pallets on top were body pillows and I forget what else, but it all fell in the pickle juice and got soaked.

I figure that's only a few thousand dollars in merchandise, but I believe that's my biggest breakage.
 
F

Folder

Unconfirmed Member
I smashed a $20,000 car to pieces.
Utterly destroyed and written off by the insurance company.
I also caused about $15,000 damage to my friend's parent's kitchen by setting it on fire. (By accident I might add.)
 
C

Crispy

Member
That's probably because he's so nervous, he doesn't have any real control over what he does.

I can't really remember breaking anything really expensive....a PS2 controller...ummm...oh I kicked through a window once by accident. After the initial shock I made a run for it, don't think anyone noticed.
 
V

Vennt

Unconfirmed Member
In one of my first jobs after leaving school, I accidently switched the mainframe's AC off before leaving for the night. I was first in the next morning & found our lovely, expensive ICL mainframe was spewing dodgy hex at me rather than the usual expected boot sequence & the room was rather hot.

I fried the Series 39's processor ("The Cube" as it was called) - Luckily ICL picked up the tab for the replacement, and also the tab for flying it out on a charter flight from Tokyo to England on the same day.

Total cost: Approx £75,000.
 
V

Vennt

Unconfirmed Member
Ecrofirt said:
i think we might have a winner.
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that, that's almost what the ICL engineer said to my shift manager at the time, something along the lines of:

"Man, I pity you, you've got a real 'winner' there, haven't you?" - *Engineer gestures in my direction*

:p
 
C

calder

Member
I dropped a pretty expensive walkman (worth about $150cdn at the time) into the lake when I was a teenager. I had the damn thing for like a week before I decided to be cool and listen to music while tooling around in the boat.

Working with dad I was helping him install the control for a backup pumping station (for a town's water supply thing). We had finished almost the whole thing when some... confusion came up about where I had run the low voltage wire that powered the main controls of the pumps. The wrong LVT wire was hooked up and after turning it on instead of a functioning pumping station we had a puff of smoke a few fried circuit boards. Cost of replacing the 2 modules - about $7000 for the components themselves not including the cost of flying them in from Toronto by courier, and about 30 hours of extra work over the weekend to get it finished on time. Luckily the way it all went down it was a pretty honest mistake, I had been asking my dad whether or not the cables had been moved (they had, and not by us but another guy who shouldn't have been messing around there) and it was as much my dad's fault as mine so he wasn't mad at me so much as mad at himself. Still, he was a grumpy guy to have to work with 12 hours a day that weekend since that was all money out of his pocket, not to mention the embarrassment of a lot of engineers and town employees witnessing it. ;P
 
A

AntoneM

Member
I bought a $150 electric shaver for myself before I went off to college. I figured it's be a good investment, I woulnd't need to haul my ass to the bathroom to shave and such. About 2 weeks after I owned it, I was grabbing for something in my dorm locker and ended up knocking it off the top shelf onto the thin carpet covering a concrete floor. It was still in one piece but when I turned it on, it made the most horrible sound and no longer worked. I haven't bought an electric shaver since (5 years).
 
F

fart

Savant
Vennt said:
In one of my first jobs after leaving school, I accidently switched the mainframe's AC off before leaving for the night. I was first in the next morning & found our lovely, expensive ICL mainframe was spewing dodgy hex at me rather than the usual expected boot sequence & the room was rather hot.

I fried the Series 39's processor ("The Cube" as it was called) - Luckily ICL picked up the tab for the replacement, and also the tab for flying it out on a charter flight from Tokyo to England on the same day.

Total cost: Approx £75,000.
Click to expand...
haha, mainframe. you old british coot.
 
M

Manabanana

Member
Matlock said:
Yes, it does, because you can see him applying heavy pressure to it right as it breaks.
Click to expand...

In addition to that, I've handled one of those before. I'm not sure what would make the one he had one-of-a-kind.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Thoughts about the bloated sizes of modern games
2
57
2K
nkarafo replied
The Great Graphics Con - No, this probably isn't what you think it is!
21
1K
Trilobit replied
What's the most impressive map you've ever played?
2
69
4K
Tams replied
[NY times] Is the Awkward ‘Diversity Era’ of Hollywood Behind Us?
Opinion 2
71
5K
Futaleufu replied
What 3 things would you urge Sony to remember if they return to the portable market?
Opinion 2
94
3K
Heimdall_Xtreme replied
Top Bottom