re: What is the most valuable/expensive thing you have broken? (excluding autos)

A customized hand-blown glass chandelier from some small island in Italy. The home owner was proudly telling the guests how they had it commissioned for their anniversary several years back (at that time). The story goes....

Back in 2006, I was attending a wedding at a multimillion dollar home here in Houston, and as everyone was leaving I grabbed someone's jacket (not sure how I even got it) and wafted a prize-winning beer fart around the foyer of the home. I swung the jacket too high and one of the cuff buttons clipped a piece of the chandelier and several pieces fell to the ground. Me and the guys quickly left and now that I think about it, this is probably the first time I've really talked about it.

Don't know the exact value but it is undoubtedly the most expensive thing I've broken.

How'd the 5 series hold up to being flipped? You hit a curb sideways?

6" of PVC pipe that was exposed on a main water line that distributed water to half of the Parish I lived in

ETA: We had claims coming to our house for people claiming damages to their laundry, etc. from the city. My Dad was a procurement manager for a chemical plant and knew all of the specs and standards for piping at that time. Turns out the pipe was out of spec and the fact that the PVC was left exposed was a major liability for the parish so they didn't make us pay for it.

Messed up back washing a 325,000 gallon collegiate competition pool.

Short and sweet, I didn't bleed the filters, and the air bubbles caused the impeller to explode. Cost around 50k to replace/repair. Reality is it was ~8 years old and would have happened sooner or later but I was at fault.

I know you said cars don't ciunt, but I once had a job transporting new cars straight from the factory off of train carts and into a lot for the dealerships to pick up. Firat day on the job I'm on the top tier of a cart driving a brand new challenger from all the way in the back of the train and as I'm going over the gap between the carts, on two tire-sized bridge gaps, the car lurched down and gets stuck hanging between carts. I was nervous as hell before I started and literally the worst thing I could have done, I did. Quit shortly after.

Watch. Luckily I had insurance on it and got another one

Motor grader. Broke the main pin in half

$60k breakfast cabinet thingy. Broke the top 3" slab

I supposedly shot a hole in a neighbor's rear window of her car with my Crosman 760 that my dad had to pay to replace. I call bullshite on her claim since I didn't fire it in our neighborhood.

Her husband committed suicide with a shotgun to his head a couple of years later. She was a bit of a nutcase.

10k precise grinder. Ran it into a 35k part I was machining.

An antique ship's compass. My boss told me to to rebuild it,refinish it. Make it look nee and don't lose any original pieces. I refurbished the compass. Took me around ten hours. Now, all I had to do was put the screws back in the compass' face that connects to the body.Those four screws walked off planet Earth. The buyer was coming to look at it and if he liked it he was going to pay 15 grand for it. I calmly took my personal tools out the shop into my truck and told bossman what happened on the way out. I never returned.

Worst I ever did was cut a W36x235 beam 3' short. It was supposed to be 59' and I cut it 56'. Ended up having to order a new beam because engineering didn't let us splice it. That was probably at minimum a $40,000 mistake.

After that a procedure was put into place that made the lead hand check every thing before it was cut.