A little story about how I thought I had a seed on a titanium plate

Don't be like me or how I could lose everything.

https://preview.redd.it/y0p10idhilwc1.jpg?960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac1ce52f281688f8e1c95ccdd7f88396a0cb1107

At some point, I bought a Trezor One back in 2017, generated 24 words, and wrote them down on a piece of paper. When Bitcoin rose and the amount became significant for me, I decided to buy a titanium plate and engrave my seed on it. But I thought it would be a good idea not to engrave the actual words, but the word number as it is located in the BIP39 dictionary on GitHub."

I did it, transferred my seed to the plate, and threw away the piece of paper. I updated the Trezor firmware several times and didn't particularly worry about the device's safety. I carried it around like a keychain, even got caught in the rain with it a couple of times. The device was functioning fine.

The other day, I decided to check my seed via Trezor Suite. I was simply stunned when I couldn't. I realized that all this time I was on the brink of losing everything, because of a misstake in some number. How many posts on Reddit were there about how after updating Trezor firmware, it reset to factory settings? My hair stood on end.

I bought another Trezor One, generated 24 words, wrote them down, recorded the public address, reset the new Trezor to factory settings, restored using my words, and the public addresses matched. Only then did I make the transaction, and all my BTC migrated to the new wallet, and I am insanely grateful for that. The amount in question isn't very large, but for me, coming from a third world country, it's huge (0.62 BTC).

Don't make my mistakes, write down the WORDS, not the NUMBERS.

P.S. The seed is on the pic is 12 words out of 24. Other 12 is on the other side. It is my old SEED, it has 0 BTC