My first board came with my first PC in '94. It was a Cherry, I think G81, but I'm not sure. It was quite a good board and I've had it till 2003, when a friend of mine borrowed my flat and, as a token of gratitude, took that old board she knew I have a strange connection to and put all the keycaps in the dishwasher. It looked brand new afterwards, but never felt the same. The space bar did not really work for me since that tragic day.
I think this one cost me a hundred bucks with the PC.
Next I went through a few OEM rubberdome boards that cost me nothing and I distinctly remember buying a Microsoft natural keyboard on ebay for 16 bucks including shipping. It's hard to admit, but the boards I used from 2006 to 2016 were a Logitech G15 (I got it broken and nursed it back to life) and later, a standard Dell OEM board somebody forgot at my place.
So 1994 until 2016 cost me about 120 bucks in Keyboards.
Then I bought a Das Keyboard Ultimate (the one with the black keycaps) and annoyed a lot of people with it. I got it used for 30 bucks.
Later, I swapped that one for a lettered one, but that one had MX red switches and I did not like them very much, so I sold it for 55 bucks.
(for those that like to keep track, that's minus 25 bucks) Looking for something mechanical to replace the Das, I ran across the Logitech Orion 610, which I bought on ebay for 63 Euros, but the model that arrived at my place had broken switches in the Numpad Enter and , keys, as well as non working LEDs on two other keys. I filed for warranty and was sent a second board for free. So I went back to ebay and bought a dozen MX brown switches and white LEDs and, after admitting that even PCB soldering, even on this caveman-simplicity level is out of my league, I made a friend replace the faulty parts. I paid 6,33 for the switches, by the way. So up until now, my foray into the world of mechanical keyboards has set me back a hefty total of €44,33 and left me with two identical, working Logitech Orion G610 boards with MX brown switches.
