When I was a kid, I thought my dad’s dad was kind of odd because whenever he’d find something he liked, he’d buy several. “How come?” I’d ask. His answer was always some variation on “they might quit making them.”

I figured it was some sort of depression-survivor thing, but now, at 38, I find myself thinking the same thing a lot. The most recent example: Several years ago, Mrs Heathen gave me the first home coffeemachine I’ve ever had that actually made consistently good coffee. Drip machines might start strong, but they’ve got weird internal parts you can’t clean, and are probably inconsistent temp-wise besides even if they DO attempt to heat the water before it hits the beans. I’ve had a mess of them, from a variety of manufacturers, and the fact of the matter is simple: they all suck. I even looked sideways at Erin for bringing this one into the house, since at the time I was making coffee a cup at a time with a filterholder set atop my favorite mug (it’s slow and sucks for volume, but it works and makes good coffee).

The model she found was a vacuum style pot made by Bodum that was actually electric. Put in water, put in coffee, hit the switch, and either watch the show or come back in a few minutes to perfect coffee, every time. The whole thing came apart for easy cleaning of every surface (though in truth, I had to ask Mrs Heathen to clean the interior of the bottom half every so often, since her hands would actually fit inside it), which meant none of the lingering weird flavors that have haunted basically every drip machine I’ve ever drunk from. Simple, direct, and reliable, the Bodum Electric Santos was damned near perfect.

I used this blessed, wonderful device nearly every morning for three years, but this week it developed significant cracks about the (plastic) base. It leaks, and therefore no longer makes good coffee. And this is the point in the story wherein I discover the model has been discontinued and that no one, apparently, makes an electric vac pot anymore. There are stovetop models (from Bodum, even), but nothing with the fire-and-forget brilliance of my late, lamented Santos. Aside from some used ones on EBay, it looks like I’m SOL.

I totally should have bought like ten of them as soon as I realized it was the One True Coffee Device. I’m kicking myself now, and counting my gramps quite a bit wiser in the bargain.