My Keyboard Collection

I've been collecting mechanical keyboards for 3-4 years now. It's not that I woke up one day and thought "well I'm gonna start building a keyboard collection!", no one needs 5 keyboards or more. It was more like "this keyboard looks really cool, I want to have this and then I can start collecting all those fancy keycap sets and customize it!". And additionally I really wanted to try out typing with different kinds of switches.
Here's where the trip down the rabbit hole began.

And here's where I was completely wrong with my though process. Because as I'm German, I usually use ISO-DE keyboard layouts and the keycap sets I want (the kawaii cutesy stuff) usually don't come in ISO-DE. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sakura Season

The first keyboard I got was the Varmilo Sakura 80% in ISO-DE and Cherry Red switches. I initially wanted to have the 100% because I'm a huge fan of the num pad but it was sold out at the time, I really wanted to have it and I thought "well, my notebooks never had a NUM pad, it'll be fine". So I went and bought it.

Turns out it wasn't fine. I missed the num pad but I used it nonetheless because I really loved the design and liked the Cherry Red switches. And at the time I noticed that I really missed the num pad, it was too late to still return it anyway (not that I would have wanted to, but still...)

Matcha problems

The next keyboard I got (as a birthday present) was the Ducky One 3 Matcha 100% in ISO-DE. And oh boy, this one was cursed!

First of all it hat the wrong switches (Cherry MX blue instead of brown) because I put the wrong keyboard on my Wishlist, not really thinking that anyone would gift me an expensive mechanical keyboard, but my birthday came and there it was. And it was beautiful, it became easily my favourite keyboard (at the time I had the Varmilo Sakura and the Razer Huntsman). My partner even changed the switches for me as he had a bunch of the browns lying around unused. Now it was truly perfect. I was happy.
But then it broke and of course it broke right after the warranty ended. How it broke? Well, tttthheee kkeeeyssss stttttaarrrtteedddd bouncing. At first it was only 1 oder 2 keys, barely noticeable albeit a bit annoying. But then the whole keyboard became unusable. So what to do? Luckily my partner saved it, but the amount of work he put in was... quite a lot, but it's still working to this day. Yay!

A Glorious Traitor

All was well with my little keyboard collection but then I stumbled over the absolutely gorgeous Traitor Aurora Keycaps which luckily were available for ISO-DE keyboards. And because the Glorious GMMK 2 keyboard in white (with Glorious Fox switches) was on my wishlist for so long, I bought both from Caseking, thinking I could just easily replace the basic white keycaps with the Aurora ones. I was wrong, like always.

You see, the GMMK2 isn't a standard 100% keyboard, it has a num pad, sure, but everything is a bit more compact. So of course the keycaps didn't quite fit and had the wrong height. It doesn't look like it on the picture but I kinda frankensteined it to make it look right. I only did that after I recognized that they keycaps wouldn't fit the Matcha keyboard properly either (and the sandy beige base of it would have also looked a bit weird with the aurora design, I think). It had something to do with the Win/Alt/Ctrl keys having the wrong size.

As of now, I've reverted the GMMK2 to its boring white standard keys and used the Aurora keys as effect keys. Looks quite cool but I've yet to find a compatible ISO-DE keyboard for the Aurora keys, lol...

Along came Taro

After having accumulated 3 keyboards over a short timespan I fully embraced being a keyboard nerd, despite a quite confused one. I wasn't planning on buying yet another one when I got an ad for Akko's MonsGeek Taro Purple keyboard (with V3 Cream Yellow Pro switches). Purple is one of my favourite colours and it only took 3 days of bargaining with myself (because I had enough keyboards already and this would be my first ANSI keyboard and I didn't know if I'd be able to use it comfortably) before I caved and bought it - on sale because despite apparently buying expensive keyboards all the time, I'm actually quite stingy...

Of course all the worrying was in vain, after a short period of getting used to the differently shaped enter key of the ANSI layout, it worked quite well for me and I've used it for most of the second half of last year.

I've also came to learn that I kinda like every switch there is. Cherry Red, Blue, Brown, the Glorious Fox Switches and the V3 Cream Yellow ones from Akko were all nice to type with. Still, my absolute favourite for 10 years now are the Cherry Blue switches, even though yes, they are loud and clicky, but I like it that way.

Bun Wonderland

My newest acquisition is the Bun Wonderland keyboard from Akko (with V3 Piano Pro switches). Initially I only wanted to have the keycaps, but I only have the purple body of the Taro keyboard suitable for ANSI layouts and the orange-yellow-brownish keycaps would have looked completely out of place on it. I mean I even buy matching mouse mats for my keyboards, of course everything has to fit the theme. Yes I'm fine, thank you for asking.

With Bun Wonderland, I opted for the non-round keycaps and picked the cat shaped ones because they looked more comfortable to type on than the bun shaped ones. Also, kitty keycaps! How could I not buy them?!

After only a week it arrived from China and I was over the moon!

Not only has it a bread (and cat) theme, it's the cutest keyboard I've ever seen and the keycaps feel so soft! Easily my new favourite of the bunch! Can't say much about it as I only own it for a few days at this point but I regret nothing and I love typing on it (though I'm writing this post on my MacBook).

What I do regret is getting the Varmilo Sakura keyboard in 80% instead of 100% but at least that cured me of wanting to try even smaller keyboards as I quickly learned that I really only like the full sized ones (that's what she said huehuehue).

And this concludes my whole keyboard collection. Yes I have a problem, no I don't want to talk about it.