Hey guys, I’m looking on e-bay for a keyboard to harvest some vintage cherry blacks but many times sellers don’t post details on switches, manufacture date, etc. Does anyone have any tips for reliable sources for vintage blacks?
Wyse, Wyse, Wyse. Famous for great vints.
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Any particular model? Do they all use Cherry Blacks or do they use other switches as well?
The SteelSeries G6V2 and G7 use Cherry Blacks. They’re both gaming boards that often pop up second hand on eBay.
Whether they are old enough to be considered ‘vintage’ is up to you. My own G7 is a pleasant board to use, but I’ll eventually sell or harvest it because it doesn’t suit my preferences.
Those are not considered ‘vintage black’
Those are just older (if not retooled) blacks.
as @Lesbian had said, wyse boards are the best bet for pretty much anyone.
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Thank you for the tip. Found a NOS WYSE on eBay last week and received it a few days ago… Down the rabbit hole I go.
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That’s a fantastic cop - Sorry I forgot to get more info!
I heads up to you vint black seekers, vint blacks are most well known for their smoothness.
Why are they smooth?
- Better molds. @HaaTa has posted these wonderful graphs (How Cherry has fallen - deskthority) demonstrating the quality of cherry molds throughout the years (even after their various retooling).
- Well used. Unsurprisingly, some of the best vintage black switches are those that were used for over a decade in a public library as the plastic has been so worn it is so smooth. While a NOS (New Old Stock) Vint Black may be smoother than a standard one, it won’t blow you away like an extremely well used one (you may need to clean out really old ones though).
Best of luck to you vint black hunters 
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I had definitely considered whether to go with well-worn vint blacks or go NOS. My thought was to start with a baseline comparison of NOS to see how smooth they were from the factory before grabbing some high mileage ones. I think it will be interesting to compare.
Used WYSE boards are much less expensive so going NOS might just be a waste of money but we’ll see 
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NOS is absolutely not a waste of money. What you should do, however, is break those puppies in before you lubricate them. Whether you use the @donpark method of rolling a ball over them or using the WYSE board on it’s own, you want to make sure that you get a little break-in before you put them into another board.
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Good suggestion. Thanks.
NOS vs well worn, the age old vint black debate LOL! I think I’d take NOS just because you know you have the full lifetime of the switches. Although I have felt some well worn vint blacks that were mind blowingly smooth so don’t turn your nose at them either.
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Yeah, the good news is that WYSE keyboards are still relatively plentiful on eBay, so even if the NOS don’t meet my expectations, I can always go back to the well.
Even with new switches, it ultimately seems like a crapshoot, since I’ve had 2 different batches of the exact same model of switch feel very different! Add in the variable of a switches being used and old, and it’s almost impossible to predict what you’re going to get before you try them. With switches there doesn’t seem to be any hard or fast rules when it comes to smoothness.
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I guess I am a well-kept secret
I guess I can’t post a link to my shop here, but check r/mm. I just listed 43 sets of vintage MX blacks from 1985-1993.
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Just bought a set off your site a couple minutes ago 
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Thanks!
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You should be able to post the link to your shop now
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Keyboard Switches Just use the filters at the left to show only the in-stock items, if you prefer.
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Wyse did switch over to rubber domes, but I don’t know what year that was. They do have different PN though.
Hey, I’m new to this site & im trying to learn how harvest or where to find vintage blacks in general. Can you reach out to me please, I’d like to. It some if you have