Luxury

These days, Lego sets seem bigger and more expensive than ever, but the most expensive Lego of them all never actually hit store shelves.

From around 1979 to 1981, select business partners and Lego employees (supposedly two per year) who worked 25 years at the brick-building factory in Hohenwestedt, Germany, received one heck of an anniversary gift: a 14-carat gold Lego brick that weighs 0.8246 troy ounces. … Read more

When I get into a submarine, I expect certain amenities like air conditioning, an iPod sound system, a screaming red paint job, and a plate of caviar. All except the caviar are available with the C-Explorer 5 from U-Boat Worx.

The $2.4 million C-Explorer 5 is being advertised as the "world's first subsea limousine." It holds five people, has an air conditioning system, can dive down to 1,000 feet, and sports a full 360-degree acrylic pressure hull. Cruising speed is 3 knots underwater.… Read more

We have finally dispensed with the idea that there is any difference between the 1 percent and the 99.

How moving, then, that some of life's utter essentials are now being dispensed to everyone. Well, everyone who can afford them, that is.

It is with stomach-tightening joy that I bring you news of a vending machine that has been placed in the Burbank Towne Center. This is a vending machine that brings all of America's social classes together and gathers them around foods without which they cannot live -- like caviar, truffles, and escargot.… Read more

Last month, we stumbled upon videos of Steve Jobs' yacht, the Venus, which was reportedly unveiled a year after Jobs' death. The sleek, clean design has a certain Apple Store look to it, complete with a row of 27-inch iMacs on board, but there's no evidence the crew will don those blue Genius bar shirts.

Then recently SuperYacht Times interviewed French designer Philippe Starck, who Jobs collaborated with to design Venus. (You might remember erroneous reports earlier this year that alleged Starck was involved in designing a new Apple product -- turns out the project in question was actually … Read more

Got cold hands and a really hot wallet? Chaval Outdoor is showing off a pair of $390 heated ski gloves that regulate temperature independently for each finger. Say you're one of those people with a chronically blazing-hot thumb and perpetually shivering pinkie. These luxury gloves are here to tend to your tempermental digits.

Instead of the standard wire-heating technology you'd find in many heated gloves, the Chaval Response-XRT wireless gloves rely on a paper-thin, flexible nanotech polymer film to deliver heat to each individual finger (much like this technology from Aevex). The Seattle-area company calls its system AlphaHeat.

"Think of this like having independent temperature control in each room of your house," Chaval co-founder Mark Boone tells me.… Read more

With most speakers or headphones, you're stuck with the designer's sound, but with the Logitech UE Personal Reference Monitors (PRM) you get to play headphone designer and dial in exactly the sound you want.

Each pair is totally unique; they're built with the individually designed equalization curves you selected. My PRMs sound absolutely amazing, but I'm a little biased, I designed them to please my ears! Every PRM buyer will do the same, and if they totally screw up and hate the result, Ultimate Ears will give them another try. Each PRM set is handmade in UE's facilities in California.

The price for this level of customization doesn't come cheap, though; the Personal Reference Monitors sell for $1,999. That's extreme, but so are $285,000 luxury cars. I cover the full gamut of audio, from affordable to the craziest expensive gear. … Read more

Apple's new iPad Mini goes on sale Friday, and if you get one, you're probably going to want to show it off. You could do that by wearing an "I'm with iPad Mini" T-shirt, or you could house it in a look-at-me $700,000 case bedecked in natural sapphires and diamonds.

Yes, in the grand tradition of accessories that require liquidation of your kids' college fund, the National Sapphire Company this week announced an iPad Mini case featuring an 18K high-polished white gold body set with 3,328 natural Ceylon blue sapphires.

An Apple logo set with 50 round diamonds weighing a total of 5 carats rounds out the subtlety. Interested in a ruby monogram beneath the logo? The National Sapphire Company will happily customize your shiny new case. … Read more

With $16,000 in 1983, you could buy yourself a post-bankruptcy DeLorean and cruise around with Irene Cara on the radio. Today, you can blow the same sum on this chunky wristwatch manufactured from real DeLorean parts.

The automaker went under in 1982, but its DMC-12 sportscar was immortalized as the time machine in the "Back to the Future" films. Swiss watchmaker RJ-Romain Jerome recently announced its $15,900 DeLorean-DNA, which shares the look and some parts of its namesake.

"Entirely made of brushed stainless steel, this chronograph uses the same materials as the original bodywork of … Read more

I once had the extreme good fortune of riding around in a hot tub with 13 other people on the back of a truck in the middle of a desert. There was no driver -- it was in first gear and moving along at about five miles an hour. When we'd get close to the edge of the desert, someone would jump out, run up to the cab, turn the wheel and we'd have another hour of uninterrupted fun. It was probably the coolest thing I ever did.

Over at Gizmodo today, though, I ran across the Hot Tug, a "wood-fired hot tub in which you can sail and a tugboat in which you can enjoy warm baths." This might be a challenger for that cool crown. … Read more