>I’m getting frustrated with the general scarcity of MK related stuff and made up prices. How do you cope?

What do you mean by made up prices? Can you explain?

>A lot of brands don’t have an oficial website. And then you’re lost in asea of third party sellers/websites that look quite shady.

What brands don't have a website? Can you give an example? Most do that I can see. I think the issue is you seem to think of them as brands. They are not brands, they are at best small production studios, and often individuals. Some are more established than others, and grow... hence bigger outfits like KBDFans, or Cannon Keys, but you can't think of them as "brands". This is not like the gaming industry.

>Everything seems to be out of stock all the time.

You are probably looking at things that were a group buy. They were crowd funded projects that had a limited production run. Popular products will probably run again, but they cannot be mass manufactured in large quantities to be a constantly in stock product because the demand is just not there to meet such a supply. As a result, they are expensive to make, so a group buy allows a single person, or a small design studio to make such things by raising the funds first, which allows for the production costs. This is where all these amazing custom boards come from. They are all probably funded by group buys.

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>Some cases have a high price for simple aluminium. I do not get this. Ifeel dumb not understanding this but it’s just aluminium.

Aluminium prices are really high. Not as bad as they were around March of this year, but to make an aluminium case is very expensive indeed. Add to this the cost of low production run CNC and it's not cheap. Plastics by comparison are dirt cheap, but even an acrylic case can be expensive if it is CNC produced.

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>Are things really worth their price of is it just fabricated scarcity?

No, it is not fabricated scarcity. It's purely the economics of scale. By their very nature, custom boards are a niche market, and if you set out to make a no compromise, high quality keyboard from expensive materials and only aim to sell a few thousand of them, then the productions costs are very, very high indeed.

>These have taken some of the fun I was expecting to have as I don’t findit entertaining to collect “almost-impossible-to-get”/“waiting-forever-to-get-it” things inanything in my life, lol.

I suspect you are not only new to the hobby, but also quite young, and you are used to being able to just get what you want from Amazon etc. with next day delivery, so this whole world of custom made products, made in small numbers and financed by the people buying them is probably alien to you. It's not unique to this hobby BTW... anything that is a bespoke, small production run product will have all the same issues. Basically you can't just mass produce something to the extent that it will always be available if the market is not there to sustain such a high level of production. You have probably been watching all the YouTube videos, and seeing all the nice boards, and just assumed you could just buy this stuff like you would a gaming keyboard from Amazon. These are custom boards. They are designed by this community, for this community. They are not mass produced products. Your disappointment and disillusion is very common for newcomers, especially over the past couple of years since the pandemic "rush" into this hobby, and those who come here via YouTube videos without any real background into the hobby often fail to understand why things are the way they are, and often rebel and start saying it's all unfair, and a rip off. You have to realise that without the group buy boards that probably made you interested in the first place, this hobby would not exist. If it was all mass produced, always in stock stuff, then it would just be like the gaming industry. None of these things would be special or desirable... they'd just be another off the shelf product. There literally would not be a hobby to speak of without the low production run, group buy funded custom stuff.

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>So I settled for buying an epomaker th80 and will eventually experimentwith some switches and keycaps. Even painting the actual case of thekeyboard if I get bored. But now I feel limited to whatever I can findavailable on Amazon for fast availability and shipping

This is how everyone starts. Do you think all of us who have been into this for years splashed out on a $700 keyboard? You buy a cheaper, readily available board. You modify it... experiment.... find out what you want from a board. You learn, study, and become knowledgeable. You save up money. If you are quite young, and therefore probably don't have a lot of money, then you probably feel left out, and as if there's no hope of taking part if the hobby. This is not true. You have a mechanical board, and you are planning on modifications and customising the board. Is that not what this hobby is all about? It's not about buying things. Buying things is not a hobby :) If you are young, you will not always be young and broke either.

Have some patience. This hobby is a long haul. Buying stuff is not what the hobby is about. Only those with a large disposable income can do that, and even then, they aren't engaging with the hobby. They're just buying stuff. If all you want is a quick fix of high end stuff to flex with.... then yes, you may well be in the wrong hobby I'm afraid.

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>It would be nice to hear how you manage to have fun with the limitations I mentioned above or whether I’m wrong.

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When I first got into all this, there WAS no hobby. There were no custom boards. The interest came from modifying whatever you could get your hands on. My advice to you, is work with what you have in order to learn and grow into the hobby. Get yourself a few cheaper boards to sustain you, then when you know what you want, take part in a custom group buy when you aren't desperately waiting for it... when you have other boards to mess around with. Spend more time learning to type as well, as after all, what's the point in having nice boards if you just hunt and peck type on them (i'm not saying you do BTW... just putting forward ideas), or just play games? Learn about building your own.. designing them etc. There's so much more to this hobby than just buying things. You have to love keyboards. I'll say it again. If all you want to do is jump on a popular bandwagon... buy a thing.... flex that thing to get upvotes and likes and "respect" from your contemporaries, you are so in the wrong hobby, as this is not a quick fix hobby, and nor should it be.