Pricing niche products
I have a $600+ keyboard so I&#x27;m a part of this hobby. However, only a part of this can be explained by the expense of manufacturing at a small scale. The hobby fully embraces the drawbacks of the small scale and intentionally does nothing to try to improve it because the exclusivity drives prices up to an insane point.<p>A typical group buy for a popular case sells out in minutes or days time after time. Clearly some of the exclusivity is artificial.<p>An aluminum case that costs $300 is often 99% as nice as one for $1000.<p>There are designers lauded as geniuses that make cases that are almost identical to generic ones. It might have some kind of logo or inlay or a different color of anodized aluminum. Aftermarket they&#x27;ll be worth insane amounts of money.<p>And with keycaps pretty much the entire thing is artificial exclusivity. $300-400 aftermarket for a set of keycaps is not unheard of.<p>There&#x27;s nothing wrong with any of this, but as a happy participant I have to say the diminishing returns show up hard and fast in this hobby. Its all about fashion.<p>My $60 GMMK, with 20 minutes of easy modifications, a $30 set of keycaps, and a $90 set of healios switches was the smoothest linear keyboard I&#x27;ve ever used.<p>If you want clicky, the same setup with a $30 set of Box Jade switches will get most people the best keyboard they&#x27;ve ever used. Mx blues feel like rubber domes afterwards.<p>Interesfing article that talks about some of this. I recommend reading it.<p>Why did I pay $600+? I wanted an Ergodox split keyboard with helios switches + backlighting, to see if my wrists would feel better, and I didn&#x27;t think I was ready to build a kit that required soldering.<p>My Keycaps cost 170 of that. They are modelled after the Space Cadet keyboard from an old LISP Machine. This was uneccessary obviously but I liked them.