In my head I have a checklist of wish-list boards that I’m always on the lookout for. Tobias’ eBay feed, Cindy’s RSS feed, and favorited links to specific key word items on Y!J and eBay help make that task much easier, and I’m incredibly grateful for both Cindy and Tobias (and many other users who've kept their eyes out for me) for helping make my search easier to do!
This month I finally got to cross out the coveted full metal “ALPSaver,” as some people know it by! Let’s get to the good stuff!
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The Story---------------------------
I have a favorited link to a Y!J search of “AKB keyboard,” among a few others, that I click on at least once a day to see if any new items have been listed. I had seen a couple AKBs over the last two years that I attempted to bid on, but ultimately lost the final bid. The problem with Y!J for me is that all the auctions end at around 6:00AM my time – which I’m never awake for. So for me Y!J is very much a place-max-bid-and-hope kind of situation. It is true that Y!J is slightly different than eBay in that a bid on an item within the last 10 minutes will extend the bidding duration – I believe resetting the countdown to 10 minutes, but I could be wrong on that – but even so items tend to finish very early in the morning. So for me, when I know a listing is ending, the first thing I do before I get out of bed is check my email to see if the message from buyee is a “congratulations” or a “sorry you didn’t win” message.
So anyway, I was doing my nightly checks of new listings on Y!J and came across this thing:
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/p646553664
You can see how much I paid for it on that page as well, which isn’t exactly “cheap”, but is luckily less than what I would have paid if someone had pushed me to my maximum bid. Since I had been looking for one for a bit I wanted to make sure I won this one, though, so I don’t mind the price at all. Besides look at it! It’s looked practically BRAND NEW!!!
So I did what any vintage keyboard collector would do: placed my highest bid and then was internally and anxious mess for 4 days until I woke up and saw that I had won!!!!
AWWWWWWWWWWWW YYEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
It arrived yesterday, actually. It helped ease the pain of losing the DTA award, hahaha. This week is finals week at the university I teach at, so I’ve been grading all morning but decided to take a quick break after putting in a little under 2 hours of work to assemble the board!
The Assembly---------------------------
If you didn’t scroll through all the pics on the listing, the board arrived in two different boxes – one was the unassembled case, and the other was the board itself, still in the plastic wrap!
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AT this point I’m so excited and talking outloud to myself “duuuude this is so neat!!! THIS IS AWESOME” and my dog is giving me weird looks like I’m a crazy person, which might be true, BUT STILL! My hype was in full swing at this point.
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After mounting the board to the bottom case I decided to put the feet on, which at this point I decided to take an awesome shot of the finish used on the case.
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The Pics---------------------------
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One interesting thing about this board is that I had never known there was a 3320 model – all the models I had seen before this one were “AKB-3420” models – and actually, the box says “3420” as well but the 4 is crossed out and a 3 is written in its place. Very peculiar, but also quirky – I really like it a lot!
I will try to record a typing demo of this thing in the near future so you guys can listen to it. The space bar, in particular, is pretty neat sounding!
Thanks again for reading! The comments in support of these writings on my DTA nomination were very heartwarming and really encouraged me to continue writing these little stories about interesting boards I come across. So thank you all very much for all the support, and look forward to more writings in the future!
Typing Demo---------------------------
Spoiler:
またね。
//gains.
