looks great

I don't know if this will change, or matters. Keyboards sit somewhere between tradition art and the luxury items you listed. Kit cars are maybe the closest approximation?

I think the closest parallel would be New Supercars/Hypercars. Even cars like the Porsche 911. It isn't bought by people who want to drive the cars. They are being bought by people who park them in a display garage, trailer them to car shows/events, and then trailer them home. People are specing their cars in such a way that when they sell it, it will be desirable for the next buyer, rather than their dream spec car.

There are near nobody in existence who can drive these cars like the Bugatti, Koenigsegg, McLaren, etc to their limits. These cars are just as much art as they are motor vehicles. So people buying these cars are more interested in the engineering, unobtanium materials to make the parts of the car, etc they actually using this as a tool that can do amazing things.

Quote from: Tseg on Tue, 07 May 2024, 08:18:02

The KB hobby is still very much in its infancy.   Eventually, high end models will emerge (just look at the 6 and 7 figure watches, 5 figure pens, for example), coffee table books will produced, Christy auctions...  I'm sure when Norbauer launches his 3-figure stabilizers. most will roll their eyes, but the whales will salivate.   Within 5 years their will be a 5-figure keyboard in market, if one does not already exist.  Based on other obscure hobbies I follow there is still a lot of upside in this hobby and mint condition vintage boards will become crazy expensive.

Now that is an interesting tought. It's really just a matter of time, until a billionaire like some oil sheikh will demand a luxury KB.

This already exists. The price of OG Korean Kustoms already are in the mid 4 figures for just the case/plate,etc. Some artisans go for mad money as well. There are also countless videos on Youtube where someone is making a $5000 custom keyboard for <insert person>.

And we are in the infancy stages of the hobby in the way of nothing is "vintage" yet. Look up the price of an air cooled Porsche 911 in 2004. They were affordable. That same 911 is now worth 10X or more because enough collectors got together and bought up the market and now they are unobtainable to a large swath of drivers. I expect OG and very special run keyboards will command a premium that will never make sense. Same with keycaps. Looking at vintage Signature Plastic sets, most sets are in the low hundreds if not lower in amounts of sets. I have had private DMs for my SA Camping set. Well above the purchase price I made in 2017.

I won't ever sell my set, but similar to vinyl pressed in 2004 there are only a few hundred in the wild and 80% of people don't know what they have and the other 20% don't want to give it up. How many people got into the hobby, build their board(s) and left the online hobby of Keyboards?