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You might know me and you might know Mindgame. We were always on the lookout for deals on mechanical keyboards in the past. One of the places where I found a few of them is a retro computing forum with a fairly large marketplace with it’s own set of rules that everyone tries to follow. I’ve already gotten a good deal off of it, and Mindgame found a few interesting boards there too. The main problem with it is that it’s really alive. People put stuff for sale there all the time, and that stuff is not always keyboards. So you would have to monitor it day and night to find something. And even when you do, the rules say that if someone clearly stated their desire to purchase the item the seller has no right to sell it to someone else. Which means, you have to be quick to snag the item.
Also I need to mention that I live in Ukraine and Mindgame lives in Moscow, Russia.
Story
So, one day, I got onto the forum and saw a post of a guy from Moscow who wanted to sell a G81-3100SAV. In the comments I found out that someone had already claimed them, followed by the comment saying “he has more”. All I could do is say that I will take all the rest. My heart was beating hard, body was shaking. This was THE deal. Little did I know, because the seller replied with something like “umm, ok, but I have about a 100, I need to count them”. At this point I knew that the seller wouldn’t send me them directly, so all I could do is contact Mindgame and ask him to pick them up. And he did.
Life would be easier if everything ended there. But in reality, a couple of people commented in the post, claiming some keyboards that I already claimed, ignoring the forum rules. And the seller was really happy to sell them off to other people. I was amazed that the moderators didn’t do anything at all. Also, we were a little afraid to say anything to the seller, because we didn’t want to squander the deal. Mindgame contacted the guy, saying that he will come to him the next morning and pick up the keyboards. He managed to convince the seller to give at least 30 of them on the first batch and another 40 on the other.
In the morning, my friend went to the seller, picked up first half of the items, stored them in the safe place and went to work. During the day, more people claimed a few boards to themselves. Now we were really afraid to lose them even more. The seller didn’t want to give us the second batch in the evening, but somehow, Mindgame convinced him. At 11:30 PM he dropped me a photo of him sitting in a car with the second batch. I was happy, Mindgame was happy too, but he was also tired because he had to go through all of this.
Pictures
Whether you’ve read all that text above or not, I know what you all came here for. Enjoy.
Photos courtesy of Mindgame.
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Spoiler:
Now that you know how we got those boards I want to tell you a story about how they appeared there in the first place. The original owner was working in IT company that was responsible for integration of computer equipment into a bank. Now, I’m not going to get too deep into the subject, but a part of the equipment were said keyboards. So the guy purchased 500 units from Germany for a price of 250 DM in 1998, which, if taking inflation into account corresponds to 217 USD today. But crisis struck Russia in 1998. Many banks went bankrupt, including, you guessed it, the bank that the man was working for. I don’t really know about how he got the keyboards, but I assume that he was just left with them and nobody really cared. Over 2 years he sold a lot of the boards to other banks until nobody cared about the obsolete tech those things became. And after 18 years he decided to sell them off.
A must-read
I want to make this clear. Please, don’t write PM’s here or anywhere else either to me or Mindgame, they will be simply ignored. Offers will not be accepted. Once the time comes we will post a WTS/FS thread. So, if you really want to have a set yourself, be patient and get ready to get them once they’re available.
