For most of us, myself included, I’m sure its a car or truck. But surely there are people here who have had accidents with other expensive things. Off the top of my head, I know I’ve dropped a $1000+ laser, and I also manged to smash up an interferometer that cost about $1500, plus represented MANY hours of labor on the part of the fellow who was setting it up. Any good stories out there?
I accidentally “broke” the carpeting in my parents’ family room by spilling red model paint on it (then proceeding to try to clean it up, which made it worse).
They didn’t get it “fixed” for a number of years, thanks to smartly-placed throw rugs and furniture, but they did have to eventually replace it.
[bitter old man voice]
Trish Reilly’s hymen.
Cost me my whole life, it did.
[/bitter old man voice]
An airplane?
Qadgop’s plane crash
Discounting car accidents, it would be an antique pitcher/bowl on a washstand in an antique shop in New Orleans when I was a kid. It lived for over 100 years til I found it and bumped into it and it was, for some reason, about $200 30 years ago (I suppose the rarity and maker of the porcelain). My father grabbed my hand and ushered me out the door of the shop and through some side streets and into the middle of a mob of tourists faster than you’d think a big man dragging a boy could move while my mother and siblings in another part of the store pretended they weren’t with us, so they double backed and met at the statue of Andrew Jackson which was always the fallback gathering place if separated and never had to pay for it. They tried to give a lesson about how “breaking something in a store without paying for it is wrong… but in this case it was alright because… uh… it was… $200… and we’re on vacation… in New Orleans which is a wicked city… the store owner… probably kills people in the backroom… so it w… do you see the moral distinction?” which we did (it was that Daddy didn’t want to pay $200 he couldn’t afford for a pitcher and bowl he didnt’ want that was shattered anyway) so due to the odd ethics I never got into trouble for not being more careful.
So, do you think that you’re special or something? 
Several years ago, I was doing a stage clean on an interferometer wafer stage. The stage was made of quartz with the mirrors plated onto the sides. I moved the stage back to get to an axis and heard a clunk as it hit the almost invisible, flat black mirror housing in the back of the tool. Testing showed no appreciable damage.
Four years later, the tool began to have accuracy problems, and during another stage clean a corner of the mirror fell off. Either it was hit a second time or a crack had propogated over the years until the piece came loose. In any case, the replacement part cost $180,000, along with a few weeks of lost productivity (labor was under contract.)
I found one of the world’s rarest 78 RPM records at a Goodwill store in Canada. “Good Rockin’ Tonight” by Wynonie Harris was issued in the US on the King label. There was no distributor for that label in Canada, so it came out there on a label called Maple Leaf / King.
I have a book on collectable 78s, and in the photo spread, there is no picture of a Maple Leaf / King label, because it says “we know of no one who has ever seen a copy to photograph it. The value of any surviving copy would be incalculable.” In terms of records, this would be many thousands of dollars.
Well, sitting at the kitchen table, I cleaned it meticulously, and set it on the chair by the wall to dry. Then my brother came in and sat down opposite me, and put his feet up on the chair by the wall. On top of one of the world’s rarest records. I am responsible for there being one fewer of these records in existence. There is still no photograph of another copy.
Hmm, in recent memory I broke the LCD monitor on my laptop. $329 to replace it.
I once had an unfortunate accident with one of those monster, oscillating, tile floor polishers. Chewed and grooved through several square feet of ER flooring. The tile was probably cheap to replace, the manpower and downtime to renovate the ER however, were probably quite a pretty penny.
When those things get away from you, they can chew up a large swath quickly.
I bought a shiny new Apple Powerbook a couple of years ago, and within a month I tripped on the powercord, propelling the whole thing onto the ungainly metal foot of my desk, shattering the screen. The repair for the screen was just too much for me to countenance, and the warranty didn’t cover it. I now had a very expensive new desktop (as it worked fine with a monitor, just the screen was hosed) instead of an expensive new laptop. Sigh.
While working on the Boeing 777 program, I was the designated hydraulic bench bitch for the day. This meant I sat at a small control panel that allowed us to apply hydraulics to any one or all 3 of the airplanes systems and I was in contact with the other functional test techs using the airplanes onboard communication system. On this particular day, a crew was replacing the actuator that controlled the the right hand main landing gear door, this was controlled by the “B” system and I knew not to apply pressure to that system. FYI, Boeing aircraft hydraulics operate at 3000 psi.
Just before afternoon break, I heard someone say that they were almost done changing the actuator and that all that needed to be done was attach the upper mount. A few minutes later I was called to slowly bring up “B” system, they only needed a few hundred psi to bring the actuator into position. What I didn’t notice was that whoever had shut off "B"system last had just hit the stop button but did not turn down the pressure control. I pulled up the stop button, hit the "B"system power button and WHAM, 3000 psi hit the system at one time. The top of the actuator rammed through it’s mounting structure then the aft upper inboard surface of the right wing.
Of course there was a big investigation and no real fault was found. It did result in a change in the control benches though, power could not be applied unless the pressure control was turned down to zero. It took an AOG (airplane on ground) crew about 7 days to fix the damage. I was later told the total cost caused because of the accident was about $300,000.
The Liberty Bell. I didn’t even realize it until somebody pointed out the huge crack.
When I was five years old, I went to visit my uncle, aunt, and cousins in Corning, New York. My uncle worked for Corning Glass, and there were some beautiful pieces of Steuben art glass in their home. While running and playing with my cousins, I accidentally broke a glass owl that was undoubtedly worth a lot of money. I felt just terrible, but my uncle and aunt were very sweet about it, and they didn’t even tell my parents. If this had happened at my own home, I’d have been screamed at and berated for days on end, and the incident would have been brought up years later as evidence that I was a worthless klutz.
After that unfortunate mishap with that Venus de Milo statue, I’m surprised they even let you museums anymore.
A several thousand dollar Zoll defibrillator. It should be pointed out that I broke it while in the process of trying to fix it.
I dropped a expensive carving knife while over at the in-laws for a holiday dinner. The tip snapped off :eek:
I was freaked out that I damaged the knife and offered to replace it, probably a couple hundred dollars. My MIL was not mad she was just glad it didn’t impale my foot (I hadn’t even thought about that).
I stepped on my cousin’s PowerBook once and broke the monitor in half. In my defense, it had been placed on the stairs at a party.
On a related note, last year a visitor to our city museum tripped on a shoelace and fell into some Qing Dynasty vases.
Total cost was over £100k ($200k). Even worse, turns out the museum forgot to insure the vases. :smack:
Or that time in Italy when JThunder tripped and knocked that tower crooked. We just can’t take him anywhere.
And now a response from Cecil Adams