I love a lot of the keyboards on here (especially ones with an integrated track ball) but I’m a poor grad student under deadlines; even most kit-boards are too much of a time sink for me to soldier together.
I know at least some of you like trying new boards all the time. And I’m guessing some of you have one or two daily drivers and then 3 older boards; maybe one that was a prototype build, or a novelty micro-board that was fun to just play with but not use, etc.
I would be happy to effectively fund a new kit/build for someone by buying one of those older (assembled) boards, but I don’t know where to look.
Is there any kind of used market, or do you guys have any recommendations?
Not sure about others, I tried to sell me keyboard but without success, maybe split keyboards are a bit too niche and no one near me (HK) is interested. I just disassembled the keyboars to scrap the components for the next build, which is a bit sad considering a significant amount of time is spent on assembling it.
that is sad. I feel like shipping isn’t as big deal compared to the cost of the board. I mean I’m looking at a pre-built Charybdis and it’s $500+
Indeed, the major cost is labor cost. I was iterating on the design once a month and do some very simple tweaking (change the screw location for example). Because I want to make sure that the entire thing works, I need to solder everything for each cycle. Due to the lack of components, I have to disassemble old working keyboard to make a new one. I probably disassembled 4 or more in total. I was looking to sell the old one for $100, but no one was interested. I guess a lot of mechanical keyboard users are probably not used to split keyboard and DIY keyboards, so are not willing to buy it.