The problem is if this takes 20 or so hours for someone who is highly skilled and could likely make a much safer easier income doing something else, so even $2000 would be $100 an hour which if OP’s hanging out on HN there’s a good chance they could just straight up make that amount in a day job.

Let’s go really pie in the sky, maybe some billionaire sees this (surely there’s some hanging out on hacker news) imagine them giving OP a $30,000 pocket watch owned by Ulysses S Grant or something and asking them to take that one of a kind art piece and encase it in resin. What would the pay rate be for such a project? The sky’s the limit, really.

Hand made pieces that only an expert could assemble are extremely expensive.