Where to find cheap keycaps sets?

[acolombo]

Where can I find the cheapest MX keycaps on sale now? Is there anything under 20€?

I would love if all the keycaps sets would be always on sale, and not only for some period of times like in GBs Aren't there some sellers that always sell keycaps sets, all the year?

I mean, I understand that it's hard to find the keycaps that were on keyboards of the past, they were made for the keyboards and not to be sold as keycaps only; but I don't understand very well producing keycaps sets now in our time and selling them only for 2 month or just a range of time, someone might explain to me which are the main motivations...

Also, I'm interested in a Cyrillic set on sale at the moment, aren't any? (obviously I'm not thinking of finding it at the price listed above.

As always, thanks guys

[kbdfr]

A GB is an order for a specified amount of sets/caps placed with a manufacturer.

The manufacturers have no reason to produce more (which would at first be unpaid for) and keep them in stock just in case a few persons happen to want them later on. They usually produce thousands of sets for big partners, and producing a few dozens for a GB is just a side business which has to be kept as simple as possible.

And in some cases, they are not even allowed to because the caps have been designed by the person who ran the GB and owns the copyright on the design (like in the case of the gorgeous Granite set).

Of course the person who runs the GB could order a few more. But honestly, would you invest hundreds of [whatever currency] for the hypothetical case someone wants them some day,

and wants them for under 20€?

[Muirium]

Correct. Being cheap also means surrendering your power. "Do what I want and I will pay you close to nothing. ALMOST NOTHING! And I'll change my mind the moment someone shows up that's cheaper."

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Keycaps are just a heap of bits of coloured plastic. Injection moulding isn't expensive. The price of keycaps shouldn't be high.

It's just the economies of scale of a product that nobody buys.

The real problem is that people are willing to accept keyboards priced so unreasonably cheap (i.e. Spongetastic, flimsy dome keyboards that rattle horribly and feel like they're clogged up with wet sand) that proper keyboards were never raised to the economies of scale of the overall demand. I mean, a Tai-Hao double-shot set is only ~$9 and that's group buy price for only a few hundred sets. Even the most awful piece of garbage keyboards (like the OK-100M spring over membrane) could be found with nice double-shots (often Tai-Hao's) in the late 80s/early 90s.

Who still remembers when Apple shipped neither a keyboard nor a mouse with a Mac?

Of course, if you expect to pay SP prices for keycaps (i.e. a base+ISO set costs as much as a whole Cherry MX keyboard), you should also expect to be paying for American labour for keyboard manufacture and assembly instead of getting your keyboards made in Taiwan. That's probably a large part of why Topre Realforce keyboards cost so much — I assume they're made by Japanese factory workers in Japan. Remember that Key Tronic keyboards were something like $200+ in the 80s.

[acolombo]

Thank you really much kbdfr for the explanation, but Daniel Beardsmore really got the point of why I asked this. For a newbie the prices of the mechanical keyboard market appears really high for what, in the end, is plastic. I guess you get used to the high prices being in the community, because obviously we want always more keyboards/keycaps, and I can see it even if I'm in the forum since a month. It's almost an exclusive market in my opinion, expect the users here on DT (and also on GH for what I can see from outside) make it more inclusive being really kind and helpfull.

Anyway don't worry kbdfr and Muirium, for 20€ I'm not looking at GBs quality keycaps, but just any cheap keycap set (new, because I don't like used keycaps) , just to have a different layout than my DE one and nothing else. I'm looking more for a chinese basic thing, but I can find only expensive ones, or sets I don't like, or again taibao full chinese links. I hoped that someone could give me a link where I could have a choice of some cheap, chinese keycaps sets; but probably it may not exist.

Obviously I will spend more on my final keycap set, and as I wrote above I'm going to spend more for a good cyrillic set.

Of course the person who runs the GB could order a few more. But honestly, would you invest hundreds of [whatever currency] for the hypothetical case someone wants them some day,

Surely not, but maybe a company would do. Signature Plastics, for example, with its Pimp my Keyboad thing could do something similar. But yeah, as you all said the the overall demand is really low, probably too low to do it.

It would be cool to have a site like Massdrop or Pimp my Keyboard that "always sell" the keycaps, but they will be really sold only when the minimum quantity of people/sets is reached. Obviously there will be problems of people not wanting them anymore if the time passed from the offer and the actual sale, but there could be solutions. Maybe it still wouldn't work, it's just an idea. Re-reading it feels like a Group buy, but group buys seems like available only one time and never again. It feels really bad that some of the nicest keycaps sets will never be available in the future for people that didn't have a chance to buy it at the first go. I really don't get this. This is still a "nobody buys it" market, so, if there's enough deman and still someone wants to keep it limited to round 1, is just a negative thing imho.

[Muirium]

Ah, good to see you're sane! PMK does actually have a confusing second identity as SP's key shop:

http://keyshop.pimpmykeyboard.com/

[scottc]

There are blank white PBT sets on Banggood for less than €15.

[acolombo]

There are blank white PBT sets on Banggood for less than €15.

Yeah, that's actually what I'm looking for! Thanks. Cheap and readily available.

If someone knows about other sets for similar prices please link it below, so me, and the others that will look for the same thing, will have more choice.

[scottc]

If you want something right now, I might have a spare tai-hao set around here somewhere...

[Halvar]

My crystal ball tells me acolombo needs an ISO set though.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Yeah the Tai-Hao ISO sets aren't shipping yet.

That's an interesting question — I assume they did ISO, for the Focus FK-2002. I assume the Focus FK-2002 used theirs, although they're structurally different to mine.

[acolombo]

My crystal ball tells me acolombo needs an ISO set though.

ahah I'm looking more for an ANSI because I'm going to buy an ANSI 11800 (to try browns), but yeah, at the moment I will use the keycaps I can use on the ISO 11900 I got from you (just to remove the unpleasant feeling of pressing Y and typing Z, even if that's what I wanted to type)

[crunch]

Here you got Zowie white keycaps for €20. Swedish layout
http://www.zowiegear.dk/shop/zowie-gear ... 3258p.html

Could be hard to get outside Sweden though.