On the whole, the thing feels a bit suspicious, yes. For that price I'd have gone with the Keytrak and been incredibly happy, considering its condition and rarity (trackball, Adler-style caps, etc.).
(You also won't find any good keyboards at thrift stores, at least where I live. No e-cyclers nearby, either. And I've looked in two different states, even.)
Honestly, I've been seeing this on several Blue Alps boards that have gone up for auction and it's beginning to feel a little suspicious. Either there's some desperate people with very deep pockets out there, or I don't know...
Who knows. It could be a bit of schadenfreude; perhaps there's someone out there who's intentionally racking up the bid amounts on boards like these and the Keytrak, which, despite its interesting features, still seemed a bit excessively priced in the end. It should be noted that both the SPK and Keytrak were shared publicly on the two prominent English-speaking keyboard forums, so that not only bring more attention and potential bids on the item, but also the possibility for someone to take the piss, as they say.
I think there's definitely a bit of desperation there. Though probably a mix of desperation and deep pockets. There's no reason anyone should spend this much just to get blue Alps.
As jacobolus has mentioned, those NEC APC-H410 84 key boards both had blue Alps in them (presumambly; it also seems like the 84 key F AT layouts have a higher instance of blues over the ANSI H410E versions), and they went for a cool $71, which is VERY cheap for a blue Alps board. These weren't shared so openly either, so there wasn't all that much competition for them (but then again, they were BIN listings).
The cheapest I've gotten blue Alps for was $85 for my Leading Edge DC-2014 and $89 for my Leading Edge DC-3014, I paid $67+56 shipping (thanks TaoBao) for my Monterey K101 with blue Alps, and I paid $100 for my FAME, and $100 for my Focus FK-555, and also $100 for my NTC 6151N, all with blue Alps.
$100 was pretty much around the average price for these. Note that all the straight $100 boards had metal backs, but that's mainly coincidental.
In any case, the point here is that blue Alps boards don't have to be THAT exorbitant in price. Not $200-300+.
