What's the Holy Grail item in your hobby?
What's the Holy Grail item in your hobby?
What's the Holy Grail item in your hobby?
In amateur radio, making an Earth-Moon-Earth contact. That means bouncing your signal off of the moon, basically using it as a satellite. You generally need a big antenna array to do it. Also you need a very high quality amplifier to receive since the signal you get back from the mood is very weak. You can hear an echo of yourself delayed about 2.6 seconds, since the moon is about 1.3 light seconds away.
EME Moonbounces do look like fun. Here's a guy, I think pinging a friend off the moon.
That's dope
Dude that sounds amazing and would be crazy to demo to someone.
For example, in the headphone world, the Sennheiser HE-1 headphones are said to be like the pinnacle of headphones and most expensive, costing $59000 for a pair.
Edit: added image
The irony with those is that once you're at a stage of life where you can afford those, you probably can't hear anything over 14kHz anyway. At least there's that sweet midrange!
Out of curiosity, what would you plug those into to get the best use of them? I couldn't imagine the headphone jack on my motherboard would be able to take full advantage of them.
They're super special electrostatic headphones, so they have to be run with a special type of amplifier, and the one they come with come is absolutely insane, and is a huge part of the cost. Honestly, I bet you could cost cut the whole thing down to under $20k, but you're paying a LOT of money for stuff like the fact that the amplifier case is made of marble and has one of the coolest boot sequences imaginable, where all the tubes and knobs rise out of it and retract back in so the whole thing is seamless. It's very much one of those things that get built when engineers are handed a blank check and told "We don't care what it costs, have fun"
That thing has an inbuilt DAC, as well as S/PDIF and USB inputs, so I'd imagine any device with enough processing power to play lossless audio files and has the proper drivers should be enough.
You'd use a dedicated audio setup with it, yeah. I don't know if the 59k is the headphones only or if it includes an amplifier, but a hi range amplifier can cost thousands too.
I'm not an audiophile tho, ain't got the money, and even if I did my setup would at most cost €1000. So if anyone wants to post some real numbers go ahead.
I had the pleasure of using some at Sennheiser's booth at CES a few years back. They sound VERY nice, but I don't think they're worth $59k. Maybe 8k or something, although I know a lot of the cost is in the tubes and accessories.
In the typewriter community, the “holy grail” differs from person to person, but for me it was a 1930s Royal P equipped with a rare typeface called Vogue. Very, very rarely they’ll pop up from people who don’t know how significant that is, and that’s the only way to get one at a reasonable price - because those who do know what it is will ask thousands of dollars for it.
Eventually I found one for a comparatively cheap price (sub 1k), and the only reason someone else didn’t snap it up before I saw it was because the guy refused to ship it. Local pickup only. So I took the chance to drive the 10 hours round trip to snag it, and it sits proudly as the crown jewel of my collection:
Hells to the yeah
to drive the 10 hours round trip to snag it
Fucking respect o7.
Your actions were the only correct option. This is the same way I snagged my Onix Reference 3 floor speakers. Someone on Facebook marketplace was giving them away for free because they belonged to the previous owner of their new house, and the speakers were taking up too much space in the theater room the new owner wanted to use for Netflix and yoga. I only had to drive 2 hours, but I got immediately into my truck. They also included a Velodyne DLS-3750R Powered Subwoofer, and an Onix Rocket RSC200 Center-Channel Speaker.
Bill Lee: I gave up writing when I was ten. Too dangerous.
Woodworking: An entire log of American Chestnut.
About a century ago, the species was all but wiped out by a blight that came from Japanese chestnut. Some three billion trees died. The blight actually survives in the forest living on but not damaging oak trees, so American chestnuts are struggling to reclaim their historic habitats. The species is critically endangered and efforts to rehabilitate the population are underway, including trying to breed large surviving individuals or to genetically engineer blight resistant trees. Logging is of course completely out of the question.
American Chestnut is an excellent lumber, with many of the properties of white oak in a faster growing tree. It is straight grained, hard and strong, easy to saw and split, rot resistant due to tannins. A fantastic choice for indoor and outdoor furniture, structural timber, even telephone poles. Reclaimed chestnut timber from old buildings is highly prized, and what woodworker wouldn't love access to a few hundred board feet of freshly kiln dried American chestnut...if it was possible to ethically source.
A couple more things about American Chestnuts:
-Chestnut forests used to cover a shitton of the northeast before being reduced to basically nothing
-"Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" is about the tradition of eating American Chestnuts in the winter...
-... Because for some, it was a treat. And for others, it was practically a staple food! They were an extremely abundant resource
-Seriously, look at the size of the original American Chestnut forest:
This is one thing that I really hope GMOs allow us to counter. We need chestnut trees back. Natural and farmed ones. Perhaps we will find a gene for blight resistance someday.
Why can't they just be grown here instead of japan?
Because the disease has become endemic to American forests.
The American Chestnut was the dominant tree in the ecosystem of the forests of Eastern North America. Per Wikipedia, "it was said that a squirrel could walk from New England to Georgia solely on the branches of American chestnuts." In the late 19th century, Japanese chestnut trees were imported, and they brought with them Asian Bark Fungus. American Chestnuts are quite susceptible to this fungus, and it largely wiped out the population.
The fungus infects the above ground portion of the tree, killing it. New shoots will emerge from the stump as the below ground portion of the tree isn't affected by the fungus, but the new growth doesn't get very far before the fungus kills it off again. We have no hope of eliminating the fungus from the forests.
So we've got these zombie tree stumps that will grow enough of a plant to keep the fungus alive and running (it also survives on other species of tree), but not enough to grow large and reproduce. There are some remaining adult trees here and there but the species is considered functionally extinct in the wild as it really isn't able to thrive because this fungus is among us. So unless we can hybridize or otherwise breed fungus resistant chestnut trees, we ain't got no American Chestnuts.
American chestnuts are also susceptible to ink disease and the Chinese Gall Wasp.
A lot of problems were caused by importing plants to North America; tumbleweeds aren't indigenous, they're Russian, and a massive fucking problem.
American chestnuts will die here, but I have a magnificent large Chinese chestnut tree in my yard. It's not the same, but at least we get to harvest some 10-15 gallons of chestnuts every fall.
Thanks, now I want one too. Is there any feasible way to start trying to grown some of these myself, while obviously attempting to prevent infection of my crop?
This would be an excellent question to ask The American Chestnut Foundation.
TTRPGs. A cleared schedule
And friends with matching ones
I don't care what the other nerds say. This is the Holy Grail for me:
Waaaaagh!
My holy grail is that i have an actually painted army
Respect
My hobby is (or rather was) collecting Seiko watches.
I stopped buying watches, but my holy Grail would be "The" Pogue. The original 6139-6005 yellow face automatic chronograph worn by Col. William Pogue on the Skylab mission.
Other than the NASA issued Omegas, this was his personal watch that he just took with him into space, as NASA didn't want the Astronauts to take their Speedmasters home and so they couldn't train as much with them.
This also was the first automatic chronograph in space, as no one had tried before if they would work without gravity (surprise, they did, as momentum is still very much a thing in space).
Here is a very nice write up by a very knowledgeable guy:
https://www.plus9time.com/blog/2017/12/24/the-true-seiko-pogue-chronograph-6139-6005
Heard also gshocks were one of the few space rated watches for astronauts
To clarify, would you consider this specific individual watch the holy grail, or one of that make, model and spec?
Well, the ultimate holy Grail would be this individual watch
Second would be a "true Pogue" of the same spec and very close in serial number, although that would have to compete with a few other nice Seikos... There are so many out there. A platinum first Grand Seiko. A Seiko Spacewalk. A working and complete Seiko TV Watch (as seen in James Bond - Octopussy) 😉.
I do own a fine 6139-6002 yellow dial. However, that's a later "rest of the world" model, with a more golden dial and different wording. Still nice, though. 😊
Gasp. The things I felt seeing this image.
Sorry it's a potato. There must've been something on my phone lens.
White border tho...
I like collecting games, nothing crazy like graded games (graded anything is a scam) or like I have to have every game ever made for a specific console, I just like having a big shelf of games.
I really want a like new, in box green Halo edition original Xbox. People want stupid money for them but I just want to have one. I've got a good condition boxed regular black console and a boxed Halo 3 Xbox 360 but I reeeeally want the green OG.
Here's what people are trying to sell a NIB version for
I'm a book collector, sadly most of the books in my preferred address are, and forever, will be out of my reach. My holy grail is The Magus by Francis Barrett (1801), it's basically a guidebook to the occult. I've got a facsimile edition published in 1970 but I've never seen or heard of a original copy for sale - not that I've searched, I don't wish to see an old man cry.
To celebrate the new millennium, German model train maker Märklin released a 1/87 scale electric locomotive with a body made out of platinum, with real rubys for the red taillights and other real materials such as windows made of real glass, wheels made of stainless steel and isolators of real ceramics. It's considered one of the most sought after railway models.
Do you have a link? Trying to look it up but don't know which I should be looking at.
Seems to be this one: https://www.maerklin.de/en/products/details/article/32000
Owning that super special version of Nintendo World Cup that they made for some tournament and only 4 copies in the entire world exist. And IIRC, James Rolfe (the Angry Video Game Nerd) owns 3 of them.
And IIRC, James Rolfe (the Angry Video Game Nerd) owns 3 of them.
Wait, really?
In the episode he did on it he had to borrow it from Pat the NES Punk. Of course that was 14 years ago, so I assume he could have gotten his hands on them since.
Irl Seto Kaiba, this guy
In the world of synthesisers, I’m going to say the Yamaha CS-80. Anyone who was introduced to synthesised music by listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack will recognise it. With its many tactile modulation options, it’s arguably the pinnacle of the synth as a performance instrument.
Time
What are you a speedrunner?
In photography: Global Shutter. So whenever you see object bending horizontally while they're moving, that's because most digital camera sensors have a rolling shutter.
Captain Disillusion! Can't not comment on your excellent choice in explainer video.
In cycling I would say the tools needed to replace a flat tyre.
Pair of tire levers and a new tube is what, $20?
Don't forget your pump.
Any serious guitarists will let you know their holy grail.
It's not any guitar; it's another guitar.
I bought mine for $100!
I got it new back in the early 2000s but it had a flaw in the fretboard. I returned it for exchange but they discontinued it so refunded me instead. Telling this story to someone a decade later, they suggested eBay. I looked and there it was, bought it on the spot and had it in my hands a week later.
I have enough guitars but am now looking at other instruments. A cello is high on the list.
None of the ones I already own sound good, though. Since it can't possibly be me that is the problem, I need to purchase another, more expensive one.
Elite Dangerous: the grail is the Fleet Carrier. Spent 7 years of non-grindy playtime saving up for mine.
Got one, really couldn’t find a use for it, let it go. If you have a gaming group to play with on E:D they’re far more useful for everyone to keep their ships on and engage in group objectives. I generally do exo, so having to maintain that beast while I was out in the black wasn’t worth it.
Good luck getting one, it’s still kinda thrilling to achieve that objective.
I love taking my FC deep into the black. Just gotta pay my squad mates to load excess fuel and I’m good to go!
When the fleet carriers came out, I think I had mine in a week. Of course, I didn't keep paying it off, I never really saw the point of them.
You just need to find a good freight loop. It's actually pretty fun running cargo with no shield (but extra armor). I had an imperial cutter customized for cargo hauling and if done right, you made money at astounding rates.
It took a while to locate, but I found a loop between three stations that allowed me to essentially buy low and sell high at every stop on the route. Though one leg of the route was all cargo transport missions, and they always invited interdictions. If done right you can drop out of FS and then jump right back out before the other ship gets their bearings. With a ship that big nobody can stop you.
But it was scary a few times. I may have lost it once or twice...
I guess an Eleiko barbell:
Pretty much the Rolls Royce of barbells.
I'm curious as to what makes it so nice? My gut reaction is to say "It's literally a rod of metal with some checkering", but I've been in enough hobbies to know that there are some very fine details that make a world of difference.
It's springy but also very very tough. Weightlifting bars are designed to be dropped from overhead with weight (bumper plates) on them, and Eleikos are rigorously tested. Also, the collars (the things on the ends) that the plates go onto rotate very smoothly.
They use these barbells in the Olympics and other high level weightlifting competitions.
My dude. $1,200 is not all that much if it's something that is going to be part of the rest of your life.
For sure. I just have a fairly decent barbell right now (came as a set with bumper plates) and I've got other stuff I need to spend money on. But soon!
I'm really just starting to get into audio and that's kind of by accident.
I actually started fixing electronics, and then some good quality audio equipment came into my life. I didn't know it was good, I thought my little piece of crap bose was awesome but holy moly no, in retrospect. Really all I wanted to do was to fix the obvious minor issues and sell it all. But I do test things meticulously before I sell them.
My first experience was listening to Stevie Wonder As and initially running up to the speakers because I thought I was hearing noise or distortion or something. No, it just turned out there was detail in the music I literally had never heard.
Well I moved that set down the line and sold it because another amazing Yamaha receiver and sub set came into my life, and then two weeks later I got some amazing studio monitor speakers for 10 bucks. Whoever priced them had no idea what they were. And they sound even more amazing in my little apartment than the other setup.
So I guess what I'm telling you all is my weird audio journey that I didn't mean to get into, and now I've become the thing I have always despised, an audiophile.
So basically just drive a dump truck starting with around $180,000 up to my place and then I can get a clean chain of great audio gear, and the appropriate reference audio to play upon it.
Also somebody to teach me what the hell I'm doing with audio stuff. But they can just scoop a few bricks of money off the pile from the dump truck.
A server rack with a few A100s
No it isn't crypto
Well, what is it then?
Selfhosting, as well as occasional LLM/GenAI model hosting for when I'm looking for inspiration in my artistic ventures.
Currently I do all this on a several generations old gaming rig and would very much like to have a dedicated server for it that I can put not in my living room
Black Lotus. You gotta shell out bank or win some vintage tournament to acquire one these days.
Electronics / hardware hacking and development. I have a Saleae Logic Pro 8 which is probably the most expensive thing I've ever bought in a weight to cost ratio at £933 for 60g.
Works fantastically, though, and the analog function and high sample rate is what truly sets it apart from other analysers.
I don't have a personal need for a 16 channel analyser currently, so couldn't bring myself to cough up the extra £500 for that model.
A debit card with limitless funds
A workshop 😅
There it is! The holy grail for all my hobbies... space
Gunpla. That one rare, out-of-print kit that is only available on ebay for like $500. I have 3 grail kits, and fortunately, 2 of them are going to get reissued in the next 6ish months, and there's a fair chance the third one may be reissued in the near future as well.
Another one for me is Godhand SPN-120-L. They are considered to be the best nippers on the market, and this is the left-handed version. Unfortunately, they're only available on Godhand's official site, and they only ship to Japan.
$500 isn't even that bad tbh. Csgo skins get sold for more than that
Sure, but it's hard to justify when the retail value is a fraction of that, and I can buy several other nice kits for the same price. I have plenty of other kits to build, so I'm fine with waiting.
Clayfighter 63 1/3 Sculptors Edition
Super subjective, but for my handtool woodworking, my grail is a pistol grip Stanley 610 drill. Do t know why, but ever since I saw one, I’ve wanted it!
Size 14 socket head
unattended bag of chips
I'm into fly fishing and the holy grail for many anglers is catching native brook trout. Most trout are stocked or introduced with wild reproduction. Brookies were plentiful at one time before the loss of habitat. There are those that crawl on their hands an knees through brush to catch a 6" fish out of a stream you can jump over
I tickled a trout once from a brook in the Galloway Forest.
TIL
In California Brook Trout is non-native, but we have a Heritage Trout Challenge where anglers try to catch six of the native trout species in their native streams. When somebody completes the challenge they get a custom certificate showing the species they caught and dates. So far I’ve caught one - California Golden Trout.
I had no idea California had so many native species. Those golden look wild!
Designing small electronics:
Unlimited money for iterated prototyping and being able to afford 0.4mm pitch BGA fabrication and rigid-flex 😂
Maybe holy grail "Item" would be an expensive electronics lab with a very nice R&S scope and a nice soldering station with a trinocular microscope.
Are you aware of this guy on youtube? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEf90AEmmxaQs5BUkHqR3Q he creates some very inspired mini electronics.
Subscribed. Thank you!
Like the “real” grail, it doesn’t exist. A mutual standard and compatibility between aftermarket automotive components. IOW, if I’m building a car, I’d want a third party automatic headlight system to work with the backlighting in the instruments, the wiper controller to work with a stock steering column switch, the air conditioning to work with any temperature sensor and thermostatic control at all…. Yeah. You need to be a programming expert and have the ability to design a controller to get all these proprietary systems to function coherently. But instead it’s cadging together systems and trying to not make it clunky and distracting.
Also, gaming: the grail would be for abandoned games that require online servers to play are turned over to the gamers. Run your own servers and mods. Licensing servers can be contracted out to third parties, so you can still buy the game and a royalty is paid to the original studio, but they don’t have to maintain it anymore.
My hobby is Chess, and to me it would be to beat a Grandmaster(impossible under normal context). I have beaten only once a National Master in a simul, to put things in perspective.
So historically speaking, when people have managed to beat a Grandmaster in chess, how often was it because they discovered such a novel new chess technique that even the Grandmaster wasn't familiar and thus pushed the boundary of the "martial" arts of chess, and how often was it because the Grandmaster made a mistake that gave their opponent a sufficient advantage to beat the Grandmaster?
Getting a novel technique is impossible, there is less and less new theory, and they know all the tricks, but the only way one can possible gain an advantage on a Grandmaster is baiting them into an opening line they they do not know well and you know very well, which again is very unlikely considering they study the game for life and even then, converting said advantage would be very difficult.
The difference between International Masters and Grandmasters is big enough, but the difference between Grandmasters and amateurs is abysmal. You can see this with the Elo System (rating system), players under 200 Elo points their rival are expected to win almost never.
They can even beat amateurs with their eyes blinded, and this is not a joke, one can just see the many videos of Grandmasters giving opponents odds like this.
Astronomy, something like this https://www.telescopesplus.com/products/meade-16-inch-lx200-acf-f-10-advanced-coma-free-telescope
Initially, I was like "not even a space telescope? The thing is probably pretty cheap"
It used to be something like a 1959 Les Paul
but honestly these days I just like hanging out with my people and enjoying a refreshing beverage. Spending on some thing got less important.Motivation. I lost it some time around 2015 and have been kinda just killing time before death ever since.
Have you tried killing time with some hobbies?
Were you diagnosed with something at that time?
Proper.
Green Chartreuse.
Idk if it's just oz but I never have trouble finding the stuff, always at dans whenever I check
Never on the ground here anymore, US$100 online but not from any vendor I trust. It's a really nice ingredient for a lot of cocktails.
Drum of Swedish Ammonium Perchlorate.
For me with gaming (both playing and dev), a Steam Deck. Never wanted anything more in my life, seeing people have them and barely use them hurts. But I'm on long-term sick leave and live paycheck to paycheck, not able to save anything and it doesn't look like that'll change anytime soon. And it's more than just wanting a cool thing, all I have is a shitty laptop from 2010 that barely plays 1080p video, and a TV I found outside that gets so warm that it's hard to sit in front of for longer than two hours at a time. The laptop has no battery so it has to be used with the charger connected all the time and it's too heavy to comfortably use anywhere but at a desk. I also have back and knee problems and having something like a Steam Deck would allow me to play and develop in bed or on my sofa and save me some pain.
An original production Semmerling LM4.
Probably an Abarth 695 Bipisto or similar. I could drive nothing but Fiat 500s and die happy. I have an Abarth 500, and I've literally driven the car to its limit on the track before, 3 wheeling around corners. I can only imagine what a race prepped example would be like.
I'll try to keep these both short.
Magic the Gathering - the "Power Nine"
There's 9 cards from the first few printings that were simply deemed too powerful. Once they were out in the real world, the folks in charge realized they weren't fun to play against, and resulted in wildly uneven games. In extreme cases, the opponent could lose without even getting a single turn. They've been banned from every format*, and have never been reprinted*. *Except of course when they are. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Nine
Model railroading (O-gauge). Lionel 770e Hudson
For O gauge size, the train everyone wishes they had in their collection is the 1937-1941 Lionel 770E. This was a super-unusual toy for its day, pretty much everything else had been aimed at younger children and a lower price point. Lionel decided to take a gamble and build a hyper realistic scale model that was aimed at young adults. It was honestly not a great seller in its day due to the high price point and the looming threat of WW2. But it was, and still is, considered one of the highpoints of the industry. You could argue that the current Lionel company is founded on this concept, as their VisionLine products are focused on ultra-realistic toys for grown ups (which will always be funny, as yes, our track has 3 rails). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdDw0-Tflg
Octanitrocubane
It's called Black Lotus, I think. Not totally sure since I have never been interested in mtg as anything but something to have fun playing at a medium-high level, but I've heard copies of their original release go for many thousands of currency notes. Much to expensive for my means, but that's okay.
I've been having a great time with my Vivi/Dragon Typhoon combo lately. Most everyone thinks I'm playing a burn deck until they're up against 10+ dragos out of nowhere and it has yet to stop making me giddy when that moment comes.
The Power Nine https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Nine before mtg worked out how to balance, these 9 cards in the alpha/beta set were brokenly overpowered. There's an alpha Ancestral Recall on ebay rn for $5.5k
An original, genuine copy of 'Akalabeth: World of Doom'.
I'd kill or die for a WWII or pre-WWII Colt .45. One I would especially love would be a Singer (yes, the sewing machine company) made for the war. There's a rare one that even Forgotten Weapons hasn't seen, forget the model.
rock band 4 legacy adapter. they stopped making them years ago and the prices went from 20 bucks to over 500 bucks. i had one and it broke because it used a shitty ass micro usb
The Babel Fish
A rock
JESUS CHRIST MARIE! THEY'RE MINERALS!
I picked up 3D printing and started with the super cheap Ender 3. I keep chasing it and got there... The journey was annoying but I keep having to re-calibrate and I'm just too busy to keep fixing it.
A perfectly level bed:
Upload limit cut it off. Link to longer with punchline.