customs won't take a bite out of your wallet. They'll take your entire wallet and throw it into the fire.
The time expenditure is the worst honestly. All the switch work necessary for your choice of switch (lube, springs, spring lube, films), and other stuff like choosing foam for the inside of the board, bandaiding/shrinking/lubing/clipping stabs, etc. The soldering takes me like an hour tops nowadays - the switch work took me a week.
I have seen some mind-boggling and laugh-out-loud prices for some of the bigger boards (TKL, 1800 etc). U80-A wasn't cheap either but I love mine. It's a much better daily than my 60%s are. I've cut down my boards to just 2 now, my U80-A and X60R.
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