Ok Reddit, what's the most expensive thing you've ever broken?

CaptainTaters · 5 months

I ruined a $3200.00 laptop in a yawning accident.

I was pulling a late night developing some code for an impending deadline. I throw my hands back to yawn and raise them over my head (Steve Holt!), but my right hand came right down on this crappy cup. It was filled to the top with hot, sugar-filled coffe and it completely ruined the laptop.

I took the whole thing apart and tried to clean it, but it never turned on again.

PBandJs4days · 5 months

My friend put a Dodge Viper that wasn't his through half a vineyard that wasn't his either.

MyCatLikesChicken · 5 months

parked a truck in the dealerships parking lot; didn't put it in park, got out. Truck rolled downhill into two seven series beamers...

Merytz · 5 months

I broke a lock to a major building once.

I didnt tell anyone and they thought that someone had stolen a master key when anyone could get through the door. They changed EVERY lock in the 10 story building.

100,000$

Luftwaffle88 · 5 months

Accidentally picked up a Silicon wafer at work without wearing any electroshock protective gear. they tested it and turns out that I did end up screwing it up. had to scrap it.

Cost: $45K

for those that dont know. A silicon wafer is a circular disc the size of a cd disc that is cut up into little pieces. Each of those little pieces are half the size of a thumbnail and used to build microprocessors and such.

They now have my picture in the lab. It says "Dont be like Luftwaffle88, ALWAYS wear protective gear"

ilovetatortots · 5 months

A Boeing 737. They dont take kindly to having their nose gear almost twisted off.

Richardchambuhs · 5 months

I dropped a 400 dollar acoustic guitar after playing two solo songs at church. The neck popped off of the body and all I did was return to the Mic, say "Rock and Roll" completely calmly, and walk off stage. Take that, congregation.

edo5019 · 5 months

5th grade. Needed a pen. Took one from my dad's desk. Broke it. Turns out it was an $8,000 pen he got as a gift.

BuddhaBoost · 5 months

The condom......

m4nu · 5 months

A rear ended a Ferrari once. I don't how expensive it turned out for the poor guy, but it looked bad.

Krutonman · 5 months

[deleted]

preguica88 · 5 months

Not me, but I witnessed this happen.

January 2007, my friend had just started to date a guy. We all went over to his place for lunch and to enjoy the gigantic, obscenely large, thousands and thousand of dollars kind of flat screen TV his family had just gotten over the holidays, and to play a game of Wii, which someone in the house had also gotten for Christmas. My friend was a classic blonde, when someone told her to put the wiimote strap around her wrist she said "Well I'm not gonna take it with me when I go!"

Plays Wii baseball, first up, throws the controller with all her force into the tv, shattering the screen.

Dude blamed it on his little brother. They stayed together for two more years with that secret.

artificiallyvain · 5 months

In high school I went to a house party for halloween dressed in a fat suit with a mullet wig. The house was a frickin mansion, immaculately decorated. Alcohol was consumed. I then decided to try to slide down the length of the hallway on my fat-suit belly. I slid right into a bouquet of glass lilies blown by none other than Dale fucking Chihuly.

this little thing is worth $25,000, so I'm guessing the bouquet that I shattered was at least $100,000.

EDIT to add assumed cost of bouquet.

redrum00 · 5 months

my c6 vertebrae. that one was $150,000. luckily insurance had my back. so, dodged a bullet there. But, didn't quite dodge that car that nailed me on my bike:)

Treberto · 5 months

A $500,000 cooling system for a laser guided rocket system (LANTIRN).

FreshBakedTroll · 5 months

I dropped a PS3 onto a Macbook Pro and broke both at the same time

gder · 5 months

I was working a forklift in a warehouse. Basically it was where we kept all the stock for the cleanroom fab that was onsite. Now you have to understand that because of the nature of the business everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, that goes into a cleanroom is fucking expensive.

So there I am lifting a pallet to the fourth shelf. I nudged the forks up a little too high and caught the top shelf. Knocking off a box that contained what was essentially a 10 foot long quartz crystal tube that was used in some equipment.

It was like slow motion, the box tipped a little and then fell down between the rails. It only dropped about 4 feet but the cracking sound that echoed through the warehouse was like a gunshot to me.

After reviewing the damage I had to fill out a lost material report. Looked up the price on the damn think and it was something like $230,000.

So yeah, $230,000 is the value of the most expensive thing I've ever broken.

MachoNinja · 5 months

Dropped an X-Ray tube, $80,000.00. That was a long day.

shmedricko · 5 months

A building. No kidding. I used to service and calibrate pressure/temperature gauges for an undisclosed oil/service company. Anyway, we had to calibrate these tools to temperatures as low as -50C which requires usage of huge tanks of CO2 used to cool the calibration baths. Anyway, they have these bleed off valves that are to set to reduce pressure if the container reached a certain PSI. I became very comfortable with the process, and didn't use the checklist as often as I should have. Anyway this bleed off valve was left completely closed overnight, built up immense, world ruining pressure, and blew up. The entire shop was ruined. Was greeted at work next day by the fire marshal who tore me a new one, and then my boss, who was actually quite cool about the situation (he must have had some glorious insurance policy), and let me go. Didn't matter, got severance pay!

James_MacLaren · 5 months

A hundred-million dollar TDRSS satellite, I think. But they fixed it, apparently. The entire payload stack (TDRSS, IUS, Anik, and the Anik's boost stage, which, I guess, adds up to more than a hundred-million when you include everything else in addition to the TDRSS) all got rolled back to the O&C building or wherever, removed from the Payload Canister, and I guess repaired or reworked or something, after our inadvertent entry into the PCR at Pad A. They eventually rolled the TDRSS back out to fly on a different mission, but unfortunately, it wound up in the payload bay on Challenger's last flight and never made it into orbit.

MagicAvocado · 5 months

I once broke both of a kid's legs. I'm not sure how much those are worth.

ignaro · 5 months

A (wealthy) schoolmate of mine was given a brand new Cadillac CTS sports sedan for his 16th birthday. Three days later, he hit a curb doing 100mph+, launching the Caddy into the front lot of the very dealership his dad bought it at, flying over the first two Cadillacs in the front row and totaling the next dozen or so.

As I heard it, the dad had bought several cars there already so insurance covered it. Then the kid got a very used Volvo-- his parents may have spoiled him but they weren't stupid.

Spartyon · 5 months

My face. I was elbowed during a soccer game and shattered a bunch of facial bones, crushed my sinuses and broke my pallate**. On top of the surgeries to put the three titanium plates in my cheek bones I also needed some plastic surgery for where my tooth tore through my upper lip.

Thankfully I had great insurance because I easily rung up 100K in bills.

MrFeatherman · 5 months

My parents $3000 stereo system my dad brought back from Germany while there with the Air Force. It was a single disc player...I made it a 13 disc player :) genius.

b33t2 · 5 months

me and a friend at school where wrestling on stage behind all the curtains, there is about 8/9 rows of 20-30ft curtains about 50ft width. i threw him into it, wrapped him in it and he fell over, the enter ceiling fell down with him, we legged it, but we will pay the price later in life, turns out the ceiling was made from asbestos

someonefarted · 5 months

An F-16. I had hydrazine go EVERYWHERE because this guy and I dropped the bottle. We were lucky to be wearing our haz suits.

samdman · 5 months

My Galaxy Nexus. Just after I turned it on and started charging it, it fell of the bed and the LCD shattered. $650 down the drain

dshlect · 5 months

My friends dad is a dentist and they had one of those raisable chairs at their house....and they put it right next to the wall. I wanted to try it out so i put my foot on the pedal to make it raise and as it did, the head leaned back INTO the wall and removed the dry wall all the way up. i tried to stop it but my dumb ass 10 year old mind was preoccupied

pokeyjefferson · 5 months

When I was in the 7th grade my family was spending Christmas with my Dad's current girlfriend. We were hanging out in the dining room talking and chatting and I leaned against the girlfriend's very, very expensive marble table. The table was very long, could comfortably seat about eight. It was also old and had a lot of sentimental value, it was a gift when her second daughter was born. Anyway, apparently the base and the top of heavy marble tables aren't actually attached to each other. It makes them easier to move or ship.

So, when I leaned on the table the opposite end popped up, like a see-saw, and I jumped up out of fright. The end slammed down and half the table shattered into many small fragments that were impossible to piece back together. It was terrible. We briefly shopped for a new table for her and we could not find anything comparable for under $15,000.

Ifunctiononkitkats · 5 months

Shit, I almost forgot about this.

My grandparents were house sitting for a couple they had been extremely close to for years, I went over to visit them (I was around twelve.) My grandfather was showing me around their house, and we came to the office. He went over to the bookshelf and pulled out a bible printed in German that was around 3 hundred years old, and had been in their family for generations. He left the bible open in front of me as he walked to the other side of the room to adjust the thermostat, and I flipped the page quickly to look through. The page came clear off. i panicked, stuffed it in my shirt, and no one knew. It still haunts me.

Johnny_Hooker · 5 months

I scratched the face of a $17,000 vintage Rolex in a motorcycle accident.

terryb088 · 5 months

I was helping off-loading a brand new Fujifilm photo print developer for the 1 hour photo lab I worked at. Ended up dropping it off the lift on the truck, $135,000 mistake.

CalicoGoatee · 5 months

I was responsible for $65k of checks double clearing their accounts. Simple copy and paste error and BOOM, that $20 check you wrote for the school bake sale? yep, that's $40 now. And down the line...

gunny16 · 5 months

my left knee... never play sports up to my potential again :(

PointlessForest · 5 months

I was a kid on vacation, in a gift shop. There was a big globe made of expensive stuff. I gave it a spin and it flew off its axis and rolled onto the floor. I backed away from it (I guess as not to break it any further) and backed into a shelf full of fine crystal, knocking it all down. The store clerk started running over to me, so my parents and I exchanged a glance and BOOKED IT.

TL;DR: Broke a ton of expensive crystal and a really expensive globe, fled the scene with my parents.

FatalErection · 5 months

Something I can't even put a price on.

A little girls heart.

It was her 5th birthday and I promised her I'd be there for her party. I for some reason was always her favorite cousin and she called me "uncle Ryan" as opposed to "cousin Ryan."

Some bullshit came up at work where I had to get on a plane go halfway across the country. I thought I had the timing down right and would be back home in time. I was about half a day off due to a layover.

She was pissed at me for about 2 years. But I made sure that after that family comes before work. I'd fucking quit my job if it prevents me from seeing a kid crying saying "but you promised you would be there!"

roostercogburn · 5 months

Not really a "thing", but at work I caused about 400 of our retail stores to go down, as in not able to process electronic tenders and every single register crashed for half a day.

bewareleopard · 5 months

My (lack of a) Master of Arts in Religion. Sallie Mae is never going to let me live this one down.

ImProbablyThatGuy · 5 months

An $80,000 rice sorter. But to be fair, the fire did most of the work, I just had the misfortune of being the guy there.

kiasuten · 5 months

When I was 11 or 12, I broke and subsequently lost my first pair of 1/2 carat(karat? never understand the difference) diamond earrings. My step-dad decided that I deserved something nice for how good a kid I normally was. Two weeks later, I was brushing my hair above the sink at my friend's house. The brush bristles tugged the earring off my ear, somehow snapped it in half (couldn't have been good quality) and it went down the drain and probably into the sewage system.

Probably wasn't worth more than $200, so nothing comparable to other Redditors. But I never got another expensive thing from my step-dad again.

Ap0Th3 · 5 months

Andy Worhol's self portrait. I never really "broke" it as much as tampered with it. You see it was one of the main pieces of the exposition, on a canvas several meters high and wide, like as long as a canoe high. Anyway, when no one was watching I reached to the side of the canvas where no paint was done and grabbed a small thread that had been sticking out. I never know what I did with that thread, but that was the beginning of my multimillion dollar art collection.

Initforthecats · 5 months

It was cold and snowy November and I worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week bagging seed. I worked the 6pm to 6am shift. I was the only woman in that company's history to work outside the office. And I was not wanted, a small woman doing "a mans" job. It was so fucking cold and miserable. I got sick and was with fever. I spent my breaks sleeping in the smoking truck trailer. I drove a forklift and stacked the seed pallets around the warehouse. With a backboard like a wall you can stack the 2000 pound pallets 3 high. No backboard, 2 high. I wasn't thinking clearly and went to stack the third pallet with no back support and all 4 pallets came crashing down. Torn spilled bags and bags of seed, broken pallets scattered every where. I broke a drill press and quite a few other items at the work bench. Just hours earlier they had moved the 25 gallon drum of natural gas to another part of the warehouse. They said it's possible I could have broke that and blown up Davenport WA. This happened the day before they granted us a 3 day weekend. That was fun to clean up. I was called 'crash' from then on. It was a great job though. We were only seasonal workers but I loved it.

zland1 · 5 months

I once shipped a customer an order in the amount of $485,000.00 and then 2 days later shipped it again. How did this happen you ask? We were in the process of switching systems (to Oracle) and IT was entering in the orders that where in the system and I looked into Oracle and placed the order and shipped it same day. Then IT entered in the same order and we shipped it. That was not a good day at work!

Replies_With_GIFs · 5 months

Her heart.

ubergiles · 5 months

I was in a lab, trying to fabricate some small nano shit, either way we were using a vacuum chambered deposition machine. The vacuum was created in this large glass bell shaped chamber that was roughly 2 feet tall and a foot and a half wide with maybe inch thick glass and weighed a couple of kilograms. One day after a long series of depostions, where each would take about an hour to complete with only 5 minutes of actual interaction, we were cleaning up and I removed the lid and it started slipping ever so slightly so I readjust my grip. We good. Oh wait, no, it's starting to slip again, readjust..... nope it falls from my grasp but I catch it again only a couple of inches from the ground! I'm feeling like some kind of ninja right now, but it's still slipping so I slowly slowly lower it onto the ground to just end this charade. As the apex of the dome makes contact with the cold tile floor there is a tinkling sound and the entire thing just explodes in my hands, glass shards everywhere and my partner and I just look at each other with despair in our eyes. These bad boys cost ten thousand Great British Pounds, one choice word comes to mind!

Luckily they had a spare out back from a machine some other undergrads had messed up the previous year, so we weren't instantly shot into the sun. Our supervisor was really good about it though considering I was almost tempted to just quit university right there out of shame and terror. We also managed to mess up the vacuum pump a few times, which took a while to fix as all the pipes had to be cleaned and reoiled.

TL:DR Dropped a ten grand glass dome, got away with it.

thewriteanne · 5 months

My marriage vows!

monsterlife17 · 5 months

My right femur. Cost around $65,000 dollars after everything was said and done. Best part? Didn't even have surgery done. Imagine if i had..

WHARGARBEEES · 5 months

I killed a 2005 Honda CRV during Hurricane Irene. My roommates were stranded a couple hours away (their car loss is another story), and despite it being the middle of the hurricane, I agreed to go retrieve them so they could make it to work the next day. You know, because I'm a good friend.

I get there fine, despite nasty wind and rain. However, on the way back the rain has really built up, and many roads are flooded. Although we were actually 10 minutes from the apartment, the only road available to us at that point was starting to be flooded as well. If we didn't make it past that road, we would most likely have had to spend the night elsewhere. Or, worse, we would be stranded and trapped on some random, flooded back roads.

We'd previously cleared a tree from the road, and already passed through two large puddles, so the one in front of me looked doable enough. It was the last thing between me and a warm shower, in any case. I figured I could push through it.

Nope nope nope. Water up the exhaust, water into the engine intake. Goodbye CRV.

Insurance pretty much covered everything, though.

justinvt · 5 months

I fucked up my aortic valve with infective endocarditis (bacteria in my heart) and it only cost $25,000 for a new aortic valve. I had a stroke from the ordeal too, but they were understanding and gave me the stroke for free.

bhig3 · 5 months

My dad's BMW...

As a kid, that car took all of my accidental abuse. I spilled sprite on the consol and none of the buttons ever worked again. I hit golf balls at it without knowing it was getting hit. I vomited in it.

I really liked that car too, and my Dad for that matter. :-/

FlavorousShawty · 5 months

When I was five, my dad brought our entire family to a very ritzy resort out in the sticks. There were lots of heavy oak pieces of furniture and expensive looking antiques. Well, being the bored juvenile that I was, I went and leaned on a mirror with a shelf like thing in front of it. I was sort of rocking the mirror, and everything after that was kind of slomo. My dad just yelled my name, and i felt the mirror descending on me, so I went full turtle and curled up on the floor. The mirror shattered on me, and it was fucking heavy. It took 3 people to stand it back up, but luckily because of the thinness of the wood behind the mirror, and the fact that i'm a strong little thing, I went through the mirror and there was a me sized hole. Long story short, the mirror was imported from a Royal estate called Harewood House in England, and it cost $588,000. Flame me, but my dad's a 1%er and it was cleared up pretty quickly. Nonetheless, my dad was more pissed off than Jack Nicholson in that movie.

Sarephano · 5 months

Castle Lake in Wisconsin: I dropped a friend's iPhone 4 into the lake while fishing.

fennelouski · 5 months

A couple of summers ago I backed a truck up into a house and caused $30k in damages. It ruined my day.

papa82 · 5 months

When I was a kid, I broke the Beta cassette player. I thought it made for a lovely pencil case so i proceeded to shove all my pens and pencils in there which destroyed it.

THROUGHFAILUREIWIN · 5 months

Other then cars, a $5000 burnishing tool in a CNC lathe.

pieslam · 5 months

In my art class at the end of this past semester we spent the last 3 weeks of class working on our final project that was worth 40% of our grade.
The project was to do a series of drawings of this huge still life my prof. had set up in the middle of the room. The still life consisted of a bunch of different items: small statuettes, a bike tire, a few lamps to add light/shadow, etc. One day before class I was walking across the room to get something and didn't notice the extension cord running from one of the lamps in the still life to an outlet in the wall...
My foot snagged the cord, pulled the lamp off of the shelve it was sitting on (~ 5ft off the ground), knocked over a couple small knickknacks from the still life and onto the ground, and shifted essentially everything in the still life by at least a few inches.
I stood frozen for about 5 minutes as the room fell deathly silent and my classmates all stared at me like I was a Nazi soldier who had just stumbled into a Bat Mitzvah.

Thankfully, none of the delicate items had shattered and I was able to help my prof. put everything back to their (approximate) position, but I thought for sure I was going to fail the class and get my ass kicked by a gang of pissed-off art students.

TL;DR - I accidentally knocked over a still life that my art class had been drawing for a project worth 40% of our final grade.

thinkythought · 5 months

i punched a hole in a panasonic professional plasma display. you know, the kind you see in booths at PAX and comiccon and shit? yea.

i don't even know how much they cost, but i'd assume at least a couple thousand.

all because of a stupid drunken phone argument.

Dracula_Batman · 5 months

I was swinging my best friend's pitbull around in circles, from one of those big knotted rope toys, in his recently deceased grandmother's living room. Lost my grip, accidentally put his dog through an antique plate-glass coffee table. The pup was miraculously unharmed, which helped mitigate the disaster of telling his mom about the heirloom I destroyed.

Punch_Drunk_AA · 5 months

I had nothing to do with it but I used to work for the BLM and at the end of our fiscal year budget review we were short over 500k. No one still knows what happened to all that money

sunlightfading · 5 months

Apparently, when I was really young, I had a temper tantrum and kicked part of my mom's Swarovski unicorn-shaped crystal off.

hstjohn · 5 months

I once caused 1500 USD worth of water damage at a sleepover.

koobear · 5 months

My education.

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