GMK CYL Selene closed at KBDfans with the sub-line's first material-first colorway

GMK CYL Selene is the first set in the GMK CYL sub-line to use GMK's special-effects ABS plastic as its primary material story rather than a secondary accent. Designer whysoda reached for a rainbow glitter reflect in purple and teal over a silver-grey base — a colorway that reads differently under desk lighting than it does in product renders, which is part of the point. The set opened at KBDfans on 2026-05-15 and closed 2026-06-19.

What's in the run

Selene is double-shot Cherry profile, manufactured by GMK in Germany — the same production lineage as every other GMK CYL set, but with a meaningful material deviation. Standard GMK CYL ABS is a smooth, dense plastic that develops shine predictably over time. The special-effects variant carries embedded glitter flake in the plastic itself, meaning the iridescent purple-teal shift is structural, not a coating. It does not wear off. That distinction matters both for long-term appearance and for how the set reads at oblique angles: the reflect activates when light catches the legends, not just when the key is shot straight-on.

The kit structure follows the pattern GMK CYL has standardized across recent runs. The base kit covers standard ANSI layouts. An ISO and extended modifier kit handles extended coverage for UK, Nordic, and DE layout buyers. A novelties kit brings the thematic payload: moon-phase legends drawn from the Selene mythology, with a dedicated glyph at the centre of each novelty cap rather than a text legend. A dedicated spacebar kit rounds out the four, offering alternate bar lengths and accent colorways for split-spacebar and 65% configurations. Exact key counts per kit are on the KBDfans product page and should be treated as authoritative before ordering.

Pricing for GMK CYL base kits has ranged between $110 and $155 USD across recent cycles, with modifier and novelty add-ons typically in the $55–$85 USD range each. Selene sits within that band. A fully-kitted order — base plus a modifier kit and the novelties — puts the total in the $220–$325 range before shipping, consistent with what recent GMK CYL sets like King of the Seas and Ramune cost at a comparable configuration level. The KBDfans listing carries the exact per-kit figures.

The colorway design is worth unpacking as a buying consideration. Purple and teal have appeared across the GMK catalog before, but usually as separate set-defining accent colors rather than together in a glitter matrix over grey. The silver-grey base gives the set a neutral anchor that stops it from reading as a saturated novelty piece — the grey reads almost white under warm lighting, which pairs cleanly with aluminum and polycarbonate boards alike. Whysoda's moon-phase novelty legends reinforce the mythology angle without overloading the base kit with thematic graphics; buyers who want a cleaner look can run the base without any novelties and the set still reads as a complete colorway.

Timing

The buy opened 2026-05-15 and closed 2026-06-19, a five-week window. KBDfans is the global host. Regional vendors include Prototypist handling UK and EU orders, and Duckeebs for buyers who prefer a domestic US alternative. The presence of Prototypist as a regional proxy is significant for European buyers: orders through a local vendor simplify the customs and VAT situation on what would otherwise be a DHL International shipment with German-origin goods clearing EU customs. EU buyers ordering direct through KBDfans should calculate local import fees before committing — a fully-kitted order landing in Germany or France can add 20–25% to the landed cost.

On production timeline: GMK CYL sets have been running approximately 9 to 12 months from GB close to delivery across the last several cycles. A close at June 19, 2026 puts estimated fulfillment in Q4 2026, consistent with what GMK has communicated directly. The special-effects ABS material does not require separate production scheduling from standard Cherry-profile tooling — the glitter variant runs through the same injection-moulding process — so the timeline estimate is as reliable as any standard GMK run. The closed entry is archived on the group-buys board.

Why this is on the radar

The trends signal is concrete. Selene was tracking at +31 on the 2026-W23 Trends Tracker, direction up, across all three active vendor storefronts — KBDfans, Prototypist, and Duckeebs — simultaneously. That kind of multi-vendor lift in a single tracker week is unusual for a keycap set mid-run; it typically means the set is drawing in buyers who discovered it through secondary social channels rather than just the original IC audience. The r/MechanicalKeyboards thread pattern for Selene is consistent with that reading: the glitter-effect renders photograph distinctively in natural light, and the set has circulated in community photography threads beyond the standard GB announcement posts.

Within the GMK CYL sub-line, Selene occupies a different niche than the sets that preceded it. GMK CYL Prussian Alert led with a tight, desaturated red-on-cream palette — a Bauhaus restraint story. GMK CYL GREG R2 returned with a terracotta warmth. GMK CYL Ishtar R2 reached for a saturated lapis palette drawn from Mesopotamian brick. GMK CYL Ramune leaned into soft pastel blues. GMK CYL King of the Seas used a nautical teal as a dominant hue. Selene is the first set in the sub-line to make the plastic material itself the primary visual argument rather than the colorway palette. The glitter-reflect catches in ways a flat doubleshot cannot, and that creates a differentiated resale story: sets where the material does something the buyer can't replicate with a standard alternative tend to hold secondary market value more predictably.

The question for Selene was whether the special-effects ABS reads as a genuine collectible differentiator or as a novelty that loses its appeal once buyers have held physical keys. The tracker signal through W23 suggested the former, but physical samples were not in wide circulation until closer to the June 19 close. The novelties kit and the moon-phase legend execution are the secondary thing to watch: if the glyph work holds up in the final samples the way it reads in the renders, the set has a case as one of the stronger GMK CYL entries in the current cycle.