A hundred bucks and a weekend of yard work sounds more like a cautionary tale than a heroic failure, doesn't it? Feels like maybe the lesson here is that some hobbies look a lot cooler in the movies.
You ever have a friend who thinks they're the next Indiana Jones? My buddy Tom rented one of those for a camping trip looking for old bottles in his backyard. Found nothing but a rusted sprinkler pipe and a family of angry moles. Spent the rest of the weekend digging holes his wife made him fill back in. Cost him a hundred bucks and a weekend of yard work. He still brings it up at cookouts like it was a heroic failure.