Lord of the Rings $65 artisan keycap makes your keyboard more precious

Artisan keycaps, with their detailed artwork crammed into their tiny box shapes, do a lot to change the feel of your keyboard. Adding the latest from keyboard enthusiast Drop, however, may just have dwarves, elves, and one particularly stringy-haired, emaciated creature after you, because it puts the ring from The Lord of the Rings right on your peripheral.

The Drop + The Lord of the Rings The One Ring keycap announced Wednesday is a resin piece that comes in one of three designs to mark various resting places of the coveted One Ring.

The Lava ring depicts Mount Doom, where it started and ended, with swirls of red, orange, and yellow to mimic the deadly molten rock. Sharp eyes can spot Mordor characters engraved in the ring. And critical fans will note the Eye of Sauron, curiously set in a vertical position, rather than horizontally.

The lengthy Anduin River flows throughout the Stream keycap. Drop tells the tale on its product page, noting that this is where the One Ring “lay in wait for several millennia after the first defeat of Sauron and the death of his foe, Isildur.”

That brings us to the Forest keycap, with roots from the elven land of Lothlórien crawling all over it. This is where the One Ring met Queen Galadriel.

Drop’s new artisan keycaps are each $65, which may seem like a lot to top a single key on your keyboard, but many have worked much, much harder to get a finger on the One Ring.

The keycaps, handcrafted by artisan keycap maker Dwarf Factory, use the SA R1 form factor, so they’re taller and more spherical for a contoured retro look. SA keycaps generally have a lower and mildly louder sound when pressing compared to the more common Cherry profile keycaps.

This is Drop’s second Lord of the Rings keycap drop of late. Last week, it announced the Drop + The Lord of the Rings MT3 Elvish and Dwarvish keycap sets. These are sets of keycaps with legends written in Elvish and Dwarvish languages from the series. Pairing one of the sets with one of these new artisan keycaps seems like an obvious way to really make your keyboard rep Middle-Earth. But note that the Elvish and Dwarvish keycap sets have an MT3 profile, not SA like the artisan caps. The MT3 profile is very similar but, as per its creator, “slightly deeper,” with keys that are “generally shorter” and at a different angle.

Naturally, getting your hands on The Precious will require an epic of sorts—an epic wait to be exact. Although the keycaps are available for preorder now, they’re not expected to ship until March 11.

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