Recently, I found it very frustrating to be limited to 144-pin QFP's. So, I've been looking at some IR "welders" to solder BGA's. Found one today for about $150US. I figure I could practice on QFP's or old motherboards and work my way up to designing with 1mm BGAs. I imagine the tough part would be accurately placing the part.
Here's a link to the one I found. There's an annoying little video there too. Anyone tried using one before?

EDIT: A related thread on BGA soldering in the Programmable Logic section. BTW, I @myself on the Virtex 6 comment in there. Those IC's cost more than a new car!!! There are more capable IC's though, even just a larger 484-pin Spartan 6 in 1mm BGA, that are reasonable prices, i.e. <$50. Scratch that . The Virtex-6 IC is the XC6VLX75T-1FFG484C @ $530ea. Mucho deneiro, but still in range for a most powerful 484-pin FPGA!
Re-EDIT: The most powerful Spartan 6 in 484-pin package is the XC6VLX130T, although that weighs in @$767!

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65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502