Yes, persistence and knowing where to look is key here. Although... I will admit luck helps a lot too.
I think I paid about a total of $30 for my two 5140 boards, I think those have been my best Alps finds yet. My best best find has probably been those beam springs though.
That's a wonderful price for two 5140s, man. Yeah, it is about knowing where to look, either through flukes or finding untapped sources. Outside of my DocuTechs, the best finds I'd say I got was my Leading Edge DC-3014 for $75, my Acer KB101A for $89, and the NTC 6153EA, which I got for around $79 as a replacement for my bricked NTC 6151N. Blue Alps but QWERTZ with a short left shift but otherwise ANSI, er, BAE.
Those beamsprings though are deeeeefinitely your best find. I read up on some of the threads you posted in about them and it seems as though they can't easily be converted to PC, which sucks.
If so, then you're kind of in the same boat as I am with my Xerox boards. Rare, but unusable. I need to get a converter made for them. How many beamsprings did you end up with again?
If you dont want any more docutechs, you can direct the ones you find in the future to me
Well, more like I don't want to pay a ton for them after dropping so much on these. I think I was spoiled by the original find being so cheap.
) I'd love to have more if I happened upon them or someone sold them way cheap. One with a broken case or missing caps would be perfect so I could actually not feel bad salvaging the switches.
I checked a part supplier for the part number of the DocuTechs and they quoted one for me at $960.
The left short shift one's part number can't even be found online.