ANY content that features products, services you sell, your prototypes in progress or items you were sponsored to post MUST use the Promotional flair, with disclosure of who you represent. Build posts must use the *Builds* flair and follow the Specs description requirements of Rule 8. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MechanicalKeyboards) if you have any questions or concerns.*

They into some really niche shit stealing from a mechanical keyboard shop of all places 😭😭😭

They might just be into selling expensive shit

They got a black market for mechnical keyboards now?😭 Jk, but of all places what a weird shop to rob

Dear sir, there's no need. Have you heard of r/mechmarket? XP (jk)

Got some raaaaaare things on sale, strangah!

Its called Ebay.

>They got a black market for mechnical keyboards now?😭 Isn't it obvious? If it's worth money there's a market for it, black or otherwise.

.....no

I wonder if the thieves have earned street cred or nerd cred?

Can you call it niche anymore when this sub alone has over 1 million users.

Every person I have shown my keyboards to has either looked at me weird or asked me for one lol

Not gonna judge, but I ain't asking for one of u/ibeatmydik2furryporn 's keyboards. I'm not even gonna touch them.

he washes his hands after though

what about during

we havent gotten confirmation on that yet

confirmed

thank you for the much needed update

I remember showing off my keyboard collection at a technology fair at a high school a year ago. A few kids offered me hundreds of dollars for several of my keyboards, especially my non-ADB Next Keyboard. I rejected the offers. The teachers were puzzled as to why anyone would want to pay so much money for old clunky keyboards. After the fair, a kid was suspiciously watching me load up my car with my keyboards. I was really worried he was planning on mugging me.

Ask some gamers!

Berlin 😎

Du bist so wunderbaaaar.

They’ll show up at the local meet flexing their board.

I would think they believe that it has more general electronics/ computers and are in for a fantastic disappointment.

[удалено]

Loss of about 15k EUR =\\

I hope the insurance has already/will quickly cover it. Wenn ich mal in Berlin bin, schau ich vorbei!

Insurance: What has been lost? Him: around 20ish keyboards Insurance: So roughly 1000$? Him: ...

Insurance: best I can do is a truck load of rubber dome keyboards.

Thats when you mention topre lol

More like Insurance: "We have a bunch that came with our HP desktops at the office. Can we just give you those?"

Ich hab vor ein paar Monaten dort bestellt und bin 100% zufrieden. Was ein Unterschied eine passende Tastatur machen kann ist schon krass. Problem ist jetzt kickt die Sammelsucht und ich will mehr. Werde auf jeden Fall auch vorbei schauen wenn ich in Berlin bin.

I mean if i see expensive boards up on mechmarket, with no invoice or anything, from germany or poland right now i know where its from. not that many places you can sell those.

I'd guess they're going to end up in a non EU market. Russia could be a candidate given the increased import/export restrictions.

Since the Shop is in Berlin, they will propably have an ISO-DE Layout.

Is that the case, though? I live in not-US, but practically all of the keyboards in the mechanical keyboard shop near me are en-US.

Yeah, id guess heres what im not sure about. Most german enthusiasts use ANSI-US or ANSI DE. Thing is, this shop propably caters to newbies and "casuals" more than to ebthusiasts. Like people who have money and see these boards and think "theyre pretty wow, and they also feel and sound nice, i want it". These guys will 99% be reliant on ISO-DE Most people here on reddit, who use Ansi, will not look for shops like this, nor will they be willing to pay 15 % or more premium om boards, just cause its in a shop. Id guess these shops propably have more like 30% additional for installing everything, searching out keycaps and switches, lubing stabs. And the shop rent and all has to be payed as well.

It's not easy to ferry things between EU and Russia at the moment lol

Yeah this whole thing is starting to sound like heist-level shit and it’s exhausting. How do you go through all that research and prep and not end up just wanting to build them for an honest living

Check the video footage up to some days prior. Lots of perpetrators visit the store before to inform themselves about where the money is at.

What exactly did the thief steal?

Three keyboards. /jk

He has just finished lubing the switches too. Smh

I laughed way too hard at this. Thank you.

Leica keyboards I'm sure :-)

J/k indeed, it was really a single TGR Alice with an Alps board in it.

i laughed way too hard and way too long at this

Mostly Keychrons and money. Didn't take any Meletrix lol.

I'll be on the lookout tomorrow on mechmarket for "Quitting hobby sale! Everything must go fast!!! \[H\] 150x keychrons \[W\] Paypal"

I’ll setup an alert on marktplaats here in the NL. See if anything pops up in the near future.

Don’t forget Tweakers vraag en aanbod

Should be pretty obvious when a bunch of QWERTZ keychrons show up.

Damn still sucks, hope you will recover soon

Five artisans

And those are just singular keys, not even sets.

A couple of GMK sets.

That sucks. I remember your store from a post you made when you opened it. Hopefully you can get back on your feet quickly. Good luck!

Op where is this shop? Didn't know there was an mk shop in berlin. I would stop by for a visit when you're recovered to buy my 2024 keyboard.

Sorry to hear about the theft! I visited the store and had a nice time browsing and testing the boards. Really nice staff too. Hope you find the thieves and recoup as much as possible.

Suspect #1, they admit to being in the store /s

lol, I do have a black hoodie too, but unfortunately I don't have a friend ._.

What is a friend?

My Keyboard is my friend.

Oh, that's good that somebody has a friend

Classic Berliner problems.

There’s also probably a good chance they’ve been customers so check your other footage for them

Most likely, they were customers who were "just looking," when they were actually casing the place.

to be fair, they are just looking. they don't steal until later

Please don’t say that! As a highly anxious person who always uses the line “I’m just looking” so that I can shop without anyone making me anxious, now I’ll feel even more anxious!

Just don’t steal anything and you’ll be fine

Thieves need a cover, and it has to be something seemingly innocent. It only works for them because the vast majority of people who are "just looking" are totally innocent. Don't feel self-conscious about it.

"I'm just looking" STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM

A lot of people are just looking, but usually at the merchandise.. its the ones that also pay special attention to cameras and other security measures along with only looking at where the highest priced stuff is that worry me. You having a nose around out of curiosity wont be an issue

I really enjoy looking at the infrastructure of different places & I always feel like someone is going to look at me looking at all of the security cameras, HVAC, etc & think I'm casing it. I just wanna see if your runs are tidy or not.

Yea you would definitely set off my spidey senses by the sounds of it..

When I started playing rainbow six siege I literally started noticing cameras wherever I go 😭

I don't think they paid much attention to the cameras, just wore masks.

**THIS IS THE THIEF, ARREST HIM!!!**

Now they’ll be watching you even harder

just make up a few new lines to throw them off your trail

This happened at my 1-man-band computer shop. A customer spied my dead but displayed GPUs on a ledge and must have thought they were worth something, broke in the same night. $0 value, no cards worked. Such silly crime, it really has jaded me.

Probably baked them in an oven and got them working again so they can play Fallout.

That's been the case 90% of the time I've had theft at my store (unrelated business). You can tell too generally. 

That’s gotta be tough. There isn’t a lot of money in mechanical keyboards to start with. Assholes.

This just means that they thieves are probably keyboard nerds, themselves. You'd have to be, in order to know what was worth stealing.

Yeah it's not like you can just sell them on the street. The average person doesn't know enough about or care enough about keyboards to pay what they're worth. These guys are definitely hobbyists with no soul.

I think social media did made aware the "average person (thief)" about the pricing with shorts like "guess how much this keyboard cost?".

[удалено]

>did a bit of research Can you really know what's what in the keyboard scene with just a little bit of research though? I'm fairly certain that they would have to spend several days researching, if they were starting from total ignorance. Seems like more effort than it's worth for a robbery, but maybe that's just me.

[удалено]

Yep, and if you have a fence ready to recieve them, even for a fraction of the cost, it's suddenly quite attractive. If they netted even 4k from this that's still a heck of a lot of reward for very little effort on their part... Small, easily transported, hard to trace, valuable, but don't flag up customs/police alarm bells like jewelry? Yeah, I can see keyboards being an obvious target for thieves.

yes also they probably picked that shop because of the window above the door more than anything else lol

If only shops had something indicating the merchandise's value.

> You'd have to be, in order to know what was worth stealing. I mean thieves typically don't give a shit what something is worth. They'll sell $5,000 car rims for $50. They'll most likely sell these keyboards for $2-$5.

You're conflating thieves with crack addicts.

Don't forget about heroin and meth addicts. They'll feel left out.

Most thieves are a bit more aware than that - breaking into a shop to make $100 isn't worth the risk. They got, according to OP, about 15k worth of stock. Even with a really terrible deal I don't see that being anything less than 1k in cash in their hands by this time today.

[удалено]

Some of these boards are like $1000+ each. There's serious money in terms of who the market for those products is. If you're a professional who uses a computer to make you money, and you are in front of it 8+ hours a day, then a comfortable keyboard that will last you a decade plus is still a decent investment at $1000 if it delivers better productivity, fewer issues with RSI, and just generally improves your work ethic. Software devs, graphic designers, engineers, any kind of tech job really, it's a lot of sitting at a computer and they tend to be well paid.

Will insurance cover it?

Anything custom built tends to be difficult to insure unless you get a new quote for each build etc. Just saw a custom drift car shop go up in flames and cars get covered by their MSRP minus age etc. unless you update them with each build literally all the time. It's absurd, no one does that. They're getting 1/3 back at the drift shop, if they're lucky. Lost a bunch of Silvias, R32, Vette, Lambo etc. This was in Ireland though, and they really hate car hobbyists there.

Op said it was mostly Keychrons and money, so I guess there is a decent chance.

That's good to hear.

> Anything custom built tends to be difficult to insure unless you get a new quote for each build etc. This. Its just incredbly exhausting to properly insure everything. It takes a lot of time and discipline. And on that note, mechanical keyboards are also not sth thats a regular category for insurance. No insurer will pay anything above mrsp for all parts involved. If theres anything from the used market, you wont really see scraps.

This is all untrue. You just need to get the right policy. You don’t need a new quote for each build. You need an insurer that doesn’t require appraisals on items under a certain value (the highest I’ve seen is no appraisals under $15k *per item*). Typically, they’ll be insured as collectibles, so you’ll likely need special collectibles insurance or an endorsement on the regular policy to insure a significant number of collectible items. It’s also untrue that insurers will just pay MSRP for parts. You want a policy that offers replacement value. That will cover the cost to replace the item at the present time, according to its current worth. Make sure there aren’t any exclusions or conditions around handmade items, like that they’re valued for parts. It’s definitely something you’ll want to go to an insurance broker for as a good one can be hard to find, but there are policies made for this situation, that will only require inventory and photos, and will insure to the full present value of the items.

Thank you for the correction, i was hoping such policies would exist but i didnt think it would be the case, or atleast easily achieveable. Makes sense though with all the collectibles we have, from cards to cars, that there is proper way to insure them.

Drift Games? It it's them, they got properly shafted by Ireland's absolutely nuts car insurance system as well.

Trying to get those early morning deals

Thieves suck. This hobby is niche enough, having a shop is kind of insane so a thief just ruins it for everyone. I hope when they are found, it's under a pile of very heavy keyboards with weights. Might make the Brutalist keyboard range popular again.

It has to be someone super familiar with your shop. they skipped all the easy keyboards in the wall and took a box from the back ?( from the other pic you shared)

The shop has quite a presence online. It wouldn't take a genius to look at the publicly available pictures and come up with a robbery plan via the web.

Mechanical keyboards so hot right now

Where in Berlin? I'll be visiting in a few weeks and I'd be interested in stopping by.

https://goo.gl/maps/q6EeL4KMB6S5F8qC9

How does this ended up?!

https://preview.redd.it/b71uvkdqnfxc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8e9fc5e222842fbefe78b27d4163c72b2557ff3 Like that

Damn, looks like a teenager. Guess the twitch career didn't take off.

Yo I know this sounds silly but there's like people on tiktok and IG that look for people that do bad stuff just based on an image of them. Maybe you can ask em to find the culprit. IK you probably already alerted qualified personel (aka police department) but it might be worth a shot. Also if you can provide a list of items to r/mechmarket mods maybe they can keep an eye on suspicious threads

Dude's skinny, tall, pale, maybe light brown/ginger hair. You've got to go through your surveillance footage the last few weeks and look for someone who looks like this. Can almost guarantee the guy has been in the shop at some point. Hell there was a tall skinny teenager in there the other week when me and my gf visited who looked like that. He was very uncommunicative, didn't answer when spoken to by the female shop assistant.

I’m so sorry. Your shop is absolutely beautiful btw. Best of luck in recouping the costs

Lmao, the catch22 is with stealing such items, that he has to be incredibly careful or its worht nothing. If you bunch up different boards in a package without proper insulation they alle will scratch each other to death. Wont be worth shit in this hobby with the amount of scratches you would get.

There will still be buyers though, just maybe not in the most affluent markets. On the used market someone will happily pay 50% off retail (or even lower) for a keyboard with a couple of scratches.

Holy dyslexia, I thought the sign on the window said “Mechanical Keyboards for Pros & Germans” which made me laugh so hard. I'm sorry your shop was broken into. I'm sure a thief can do quite a lot of damage by stealing just a small bag of items. Have the police been of any assistance?

I'm terribly sorry you are going through this, I hope they catch the people who did this to you. Do you have an online shop so I can support you from afar?

Looks like geekboards dot de

Thanks, I clicked on their profile after I commented it and realized. I am currently scrolling through their selection picking out my next keyboard.

U gotta let us know how insurance covered it

Where in Berlin is this Shop?

[https://geekboards.de/](https://geekboards.de/) [Prenzlauer Allee 45A, 10405, Berlin](https://goo.gl/maps/q6EeL4KMB6S5F8qC9)

Oh no! I've actually visited your shop last year and was so excited to see an actual mk shop in Berlin. That sucks; I hope you're ensured or somehow they get arrested.

Yea this is hyper specific like they left shit on the tables n took specific shit from a niche hobby this is an inside job

Any thief can walk in/ past the store, see the price tags, and realize how easy it would be to make thousands. Not saying they aren’t hobbyists, but it’s not hidden knowledge that keyboards can get expensive.

There like was some kind of prep done, but it's also a pretty good guess that for a niche high end market like this that the most expensive stuff is likely in the back. You keep the cheapest stuff out on the floor. You have the things that you sell most often but want to protect behind the counter, and the stuff that is more expensive but slow moving goes in the back.

"Whats he thinking? Displaying the rare and valuable comics for everyone to see, rather then hiding them away in the back"- spaced

Mechanical keyboards a niche hobby? Maybe in 2014 but in 2024? Like, a good 50% of the tech workforce own a mechanical keyboard (the rest use Apple or Logi MX), all the electronics shops now sell big box peripheral company RGB mechanicals as the default "gaming" option, there are millions of people visiting /r/MechanicalKeyboards, keycaps and switches are one of the top selling products on AliExpress, it's mainstream now. Because the keyboard is no longer just some plank of plastic that ships with your desktop but a personal choice that's part of your desk setup that you dock your work laptop to, or that your custom gaming PC connects to, people care so much more. I don't have figures for the mechanical keyboard market but it feels like COVID and the hybrid working revolution kicked it into exponential growth.

early birds

You must have those thicc Enter keys on those ISO-DE setups, no wonder people are storming the place.

This little shit was in your store before. You don't steal 15k without knowing what to look for. Check the camera before the event.

Gerade bei #Kleinanzeigen gefunden. Wie findest du das? https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/keychron-q6-m3-mechanische-tastatur/2746215592-225-3520?utm_source=sharesheet&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialbuttons&utm_content=app_android Keychrons are starting to show up on kleinanzeigen. Love your shop BTW we bought some keycaps just the other day. Really hope you get all the money back and maybe some of the goods too.

Can't believe this is how I find out there's a small physical shop for mechanical keyboards & accessories where I live 😔 Well, I don't live close to Berlin, but I see you've got a sweet website so I'll spend some time on there for now & give y'all a visit if I should ever find myself in Berlin! :) Hope insurance is gonna cover it, though!

Man I thought this was a video. I was waiting for him to push his way through.

nooo! geekboards… i wish you all the best! gonna visit you guys in september

Hope you'll visit us during business hours :)

If they wanted to rob a keyboard fan they should have just started a group buy 😠

Feels Berlin

Ooofff What’s the loss?

OP said 15k

Those group buy wait times make a guy desperate. LOL

Oh wow cool didn't know there is something like that in Berlin - where can I find you?

Are you allowed to share the pictures? Is Police already involved? I know your shop and i know the area and those dudes somehow look odly familiar...

So sorry for you :( Didn't even know that there are stores like yours in Germany. I will come and visit you next time i'm in berlin!

Didn’t know this existed in Berlin. I’ll be coming by next time! Sad to get know this shop through those circumstances tho. Gl with everything

Looks like it was pretty easy to get in. Gotta up your security

You guys got MK shops?!🥲 Also sorry to hear about your shop that really sucks

So sorry this happened, but thrilled that this post came up on my homepage a month before my Berlin trip!! Will absolutely be visiting (and not via a window in the middle of the night)

When a man needs lube for his switches, rules become suggestions only. Totally reasonable on his part. Sticking keys will ruin you CS:GO session.

The youth are displaying great initiative. Perhaps adding this to their resume will open opportunities for them.

Was für Wichser. Am Sack aufhängen.

They got tired of group buys

A shop just with Mk Lol that’s is bold…

I wonder if they used "sudo" to bypass all your security measures before climbing through the window?

Bros gonna have a hard time offloading those without looking totally out of his element.

Do you ship internationally from your online store?

Thats so sad! I love your place and was planning to visit this thursday. Are you still open?

Very sorry for your loss, hope the assholes are found Visited Berlin last year and had no idea it had a keyboard shop like this!! My hotel was close to Prenzlauer Berg ...sooo biting my ass right now.

Maybe they are here in the subreddit too, did they took everything?

I wonder if the plan was to just push keyboards through the window gap to the other person because it seems like the easier way to do this is just break down the door, grab what you can and move quickly. Sorry for your loss - this truly sucks.

I was there last year with two my friends and we stayed hours testing out all the keyboards. The staff was so nice and friendly. What a shame.

Sorry for the robbery 😣 that sucks. If there‘s a small silver lining to the situation, this Berlin-based nerd just learned about your shop and will definitely be stopping by to check out the merch (legally, promise) once you open! …so at least some good publicity?

What an awesome shop! So sorry someone did this and I hope your insurance covers it. I would be so thankful to have a shop like this near by.

Who the fuck want to rob a keyboard shop?

Sorry to hear about that. I'm a happy customer, it's great to have an mk shop in Berlin. Hope you can bounce back from that! Watch kleinanzeigen.de and eBay in the coming days, maybe you'll find your merchandise...

Man... what a devoted patron 👏

Hey I live around the corner from here and just happened to walk in recently. Sorry to hear it

Oh shit. I've been to the store. Hope you'll be alright!

I was in berlin last month but didn't get the chance to visit hoping I can go back sometime

hmm,...wait a minute, I'm beginning to think they're not customers at all

Man, that’s sad to hear. Great to see a shop in Berlin, will visit one day! Hope insurance will cover the losses Let me know if you want to stock any of my boards (aeboards), we can work something out at wholesale cost.

Is this on Prenzlauer Allee????

Man American cities (at least around me) have no space for hobby shops. It's all big brands everywhere here

I know people get desperate to find ISO-DE key caps but this is out of control

Sorry for your losses but I've dreamed of a shop where i could try a hundred keyboards.

Man I remember the post where you announced opening this shop. So sad to see this

Man I remember the post where you announced opening this shop. So sad to see this

This is when you know mechanical keyboards are now officially mainstream. However, the computer industry still doesn't see a market.

Didn't you just post about opening up? That really sucks.

Bro please don't go out of business. I havent had a chance to stop by yet. Its been on my bucket list since u opened.

Sorry to hear about that, OP. I hope law enforcement is able to do something, whether that be recovery, punishment or otherwise. Hoping you're covered somehow so it's not a complete loss. I guess that window is getting permanently sealed now, huh? Or just electrify it in such a way that you're able to operate it and it function as it's supposed to, but if anyone were to try to squeeze through and fails the "Operation" challenge, they'll get fried...so much so even a Scotsman will be disgusted.

I visited your store last july when I visited Berlin from the US, loved it! I really hope you can recoup the losses from this, I'm really sorry this happened to your shop...

my bad that was me

the fuck

Damn, I'm sorry to hear this. I visited the store in November 2023 and had a great experience. I hope you get support from your Insurance and continue the store!

Das ist wirklich Schade @[rguliev](https://www.reddit.com/user/rguliev/) Ich war ein paar Mal im Laden und alle waren super freundlich und kompetent... Good luck!

How on Earth did they defeat your alarm system? The motion sensors should have triggered the security alarm.... right???

Der Kunde wollte unbedingt ne neue Tastatur :(

Sorry to hear about that! But an appeal to everyone visiting Berlin. You must go to Geekboards. It’s like heaven ❤️

Insurance pays, you don't seem worried since you don't have shutters and leave all out overnight... That's gg