What gives?
I’ve been in the market for a decent, clicky keyboard for ages. Not the super cheap ones that feel like pudding, but a crisp old fashioned IBM-like. So I did an Amazon search and had it list them in price order, from high to low.
What’n the heck is this? The whole first page was keyboards >£1,000. I’ve seen this phenomenon on Amazon before (and, to a lesser extent, Ebay). So I axed @grok.
Number one is automatic price setting software. They’re set to raise or lower prices compared to their competitors. If two of these programs compete against each other and nobody’s paying attention – particularly if their other competitors are out of stock – stupid things can happen. Apparently, a text book was inflated to $23 million this way once.
AI coming to kill us all. Again.
Second is placeholders. If a vendor runs out of something but wants to keep the listing just in case it comes back in stock, they don’t delete it. They put a stupid price tag on it. I think I’d kind of figured this one out for myself, though they more usually slap a SOLD OUT on it.
Third is genuinely effing expensive niche products. Keyboards lovingly hand-machined from titanium, one key at a time. Welllll…maybe.
No, I didn’t buy one.
Posted: September 15th, 2026 under personal.
Comments: 11
Comments
Comment from Pupster Sez
Time: September 15, 2026, 10:17 pm
Everything is fake, nothing is real. It took me two tries to get to ess weasel dot com .
The stupid price thing when you are out of stock is brilliant though. If someone is panic buying you can still take their money and cobble together some returns or broken stock.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: September 15, 2026, 10:17 pm
The good old IBM buckling spring clicky keyboards, nothing like them. A company called Unicomp in the States still makes them:
Comment from MrKnowitall
Time: September 15, 2026, 11:31 pm
I’ll second the recommendation of the Unicomp buckling-spring keyboards. They bought out the tooling from the factory that made the IBM keyboards, so they are just the same as the old ones. I’m typing on one right now!
Comment from Armybrat
Time: September 16, 2026, 1:06 am
Pssssssst…my horse won the dead pool. Princess Astrid followed her brother in shuffling off this mortal coil on 11 Sept.
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: September 16, 2026, 1:51 am
Funny you should write the phrase “lovingly hand-machined from titanium” today. Just yesterday, I was reading about the new AMB 002 motorcycle, a collaboration between Aston Martin and Brough Superior. They’ve put together racing bikes in the past but those were track only.
The AMB 002, though, is street legal. It is quite spectacular and the AMB people will tell you so HERE.
The reason I bring this up is that the bike is amazingly lightweight in large part because, wait for it, it has a 5.0 Kg one-piece titanium frame lovingly hand-machined from billet.
Comment from tinman
Time: September 16, 2026, 2:33 am
Money laundering.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: September 16, 2026, 1:57 pm
Yeah – my first question about things like those expensive keyboards is “what does it bring to the party that is an actual improvement?” I suspect that wifi connectivity is the last actual improvement in keyboards and -in the real world- is frankly pointless.
I was going to suggest that you just buy an old used IBM keyboard until I learned from QuasiModo (above) that you can get a new one and have the best of both worlds. I had this revelation when I spilled margarita all over my seventeen-button blender. It took FOREVER to clean up. During that ordeal I began to muse about what all those buttons were actually doing for me. I went out to eBay and bought an old Oster one-switch beehive blender in perfect condition.
TL/DR: Once a technology has been refined to essence, any further changes are just changes, not improvements. See: Windows Excel 1997.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 16, 2026, 2:47 pm
Oof! A new Model M is £225 in the UK, and they don’t even say it’s genuine Unicomp.
Comment from aelf
Time: September 16, 2026, 3:10 pm
Another vote for Unicomp. I’ve had a couple, good feel, solid construction.
Comment from HL King
Time: September 17, 2026, 2:14 pm
If really you do want an old school keyboard, Unicomp still makes IBM style boards with buckling springs. Lexington, KY, my old stomping ground, was where most Selectric typewriters and keyboards were made.
Comment from Mark Matis
Time: September 18, 2026, 8:54 pm
NewEgg will ship to the UK and has much better prices for mechanical keyboards.
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