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UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


PirateBob posted:

I don't want to entertain the idea that people sink hundreds of dollars into cosmetics as a sunk cost.

A lot of these people who dump extreme amounts of money are also coming from crypto currency spaces.

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Woodenlung
Dec 10, 2013

Calculating Infinity
i think the prices have peaked for cs skins, with the cs2 hype. but then i also thought no one would use an ipad, so what do i know.

i have around 1000 euros in skins at this point, but a lot of it was bought a lot cheaper than its worth now. my best deal being the cobalt deagle, which i bought for around 25 euros and now costs 180 to 200 euros.

Unbound
Dec 11, 2012

Atlantis for best map

All others are bugged...
.

Unbound fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 16, 2024

Budzilla
Oct 14, 2007

We can all learn from our past mistakes.

Woodenlung posted:

i have around 1000 euros in skins at this point, but a lot of it was bought a lot cheaper than its worth now. my best deal being the cobalt deagle, which i bought for around 25 euros and now costs 180 to 200 euros.

That deagle is a good skin since it can be used as filler in trade ups.

RATS!
Dec 23, 2008

really fantastic game 1,,, shame nobody can watch it again!!!!!!!!

Kehveli
Apr 1, 2009

Push It Like You Push Your Girlfriend
just watch the demos u crybaby! its a learning process!

I have spent 12 hours on the demos so far and have ghosties movements tracked down to the subtick on every round

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003

UnknownMercenary posted:

A lot of these people who dump extreme amounts of money are also coming from crypto currency spaces.

Can you buy skins with crypto? And sell them for $ as some laundering operation?

Pandaal
Mar 7, 2020

PirateBob posted:

Can you buy skins with crypto? And sell them for $ as some laundering operation?

You can buy/sell with crypto but all the sites I’m aware of have AML mandates if you wanna pay out in cash. You have to upload identification and poo poo.

Kehveli
Apr 1, 2009

Push It Like You Push Your Girlfriend

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


Wife gets the DLore every other week.

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003
What does float mean, on the skins trade site? And the lock icon?

Should I use skinsmonkey.com or something else?

Unbound
Dec 11, 2012

Atlantis for best map

All others are bugged...

PirateBob posted:

What does float mean, on the skins trade site? And the lock icon?

Should I use skinsmonkey.com or something else?

Float refers to the actual patten the skin has. Things like Dopplers have drastically different patterns, and even colors, depending on the float.

No clue what the lock icon is, perhaps it cant be traded yet.

Also I used Skinport when I sold my stuff. Dont know about best place to buy from.

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003
Ok. What about wear? Do skins degrade during use and become less valuable?

Audax
Dec 1, 2005
"LOL U GOT OWNED"
No. The wear remains the same.

RATS!
Dec 23, 2008

Float is the amount of wear,, there's 5 different "stages" of wear, but the actual wear is represented by a float. one "factory new" skin can actually have more wear than another "factory new" skin. For some finishes it doesn't really matter, like the ak47 bloodsport just gets a little darker with wear. What flashbang was talkin about is phases,

PirateBob posted:

Ok. What about wear? Do skins degrade during use and become less valuable?

From what I can tell that literally was the intended mechanic at first but they realized it was a very bad idea lol

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003

RATS! posted:

Float is the amount of wear,, there's 5 different "stages" of wear, but the actual wear is represented by a float. one "factory new" skin can actually have more wear than another "factory new" skin. For some finishes it doesn't really matter, like the ak47 bloodsport just gets a little darker with wear. What flashbang was talkin about is phases,

From what I can tell that literally was the intended mechanic at first but they realized it was a very bad idea lol

Would have been some "pay to reload your weapon" poo poo almost lol, as was mooted at Blizzard-Activision. The Stat-Trak thing is bad enough.

Can I get some recommendations for cool M4A1-S skins? :v: Not absurdly expensive

Edit: another q: what happens when you place a buy order (at a set, lower price) on the steam market for a skin? Do you risk getting one with lovely stickers all over it?

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Dec 3, 2023

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


PirateBob posted:

What does float mean, on the skins trade site? And the lock icon?

Should I use skinsmonkey.com or something else?

Float means how much wear an item has. As a quick run down, there are five different float ranges, and float along with paint seed determines what a skin looks like. Generally speaking the higher the float number the more wore down it looks, and certain skins can have unique looks depending on float value as determined by the skin author.

Lock icon means an item isn't tradeable, and usually places will also show you when the item is able to be traded. If you buy or trade for something that has a trade lock the site you bought it from will reserve it for you until it becomes tradeable.

Skinsmonkey, like a lot of other "instant" trading sites, run their business by overvaluing the items in their inventory while undervaluing yours, and selling you "site balance" make up that difference. Skinsmonkey is one of the better sites for not skewing values completely in their favour but it still works under the same principles.

If you're 100% new to skins I'd suggest the Steam Community Market, which avoids pretty much every scam method possible but you pay a lot of markup for that safety, or a very trusted third party site like https://skinport.com/. If you have more questions I can answer them but that's a very quick and basic rundown.

PirateBob posted:

Can I get some recommendations for cool M4A1-S skins? :v: Not absurdly expensive

Edit: another q: what happens when you place a buy order on the steam market for a skin? Do you risk getting one with lovely stickers all over it?

CSGO Stash is your friend for seeing everything that's available.

When you place a buy order you have no control over what kind of skin you get from the Steam Market, as long as it falls under whatever you pre-paid for, so yes it can have stickers on it. You can just scrape them off if you don't want them.

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003

UnknownMercenary posted:

Float means how much wear an item has. As a quick run down, there are five different float ranges, and float along with paint seed determines what a skin looks like. Generally speaking the higher the float number the more wore down it looks, and certain skins can have unique looks depending on float value as determined by the skin author.

Lock icon means an item isn't tradeable, and usually places will also show you when the item is able to be traded. If you buy or trade for something that has a trade lock the site you bought it from will reserve it for you until it becomes tradeable.

Skinsmonkey, like a lot of other "instant" trading sites, run their business by overvaluing the items in their inventory while undervaluing yours, and selling you "site balance" make up that difference. Skinsmonkey is one of the better sites for not skewing values completely in their favour but it still works under the same principles.

If you're 100% new to skins I'd suggest the Steam Community Market, which avoids pretty much every scam method possible but you pay a lot of markup for that safety, or a very trusted third party site like https://skinport.com/. If you have more questions I can answer them but that's a very quick and basic rundown.

CSGO Stash is your friend for seeing everything that's available.

When you place a buy order you have no control over what kind of skin you get from the Steam Market, as long as it falls under whatever you pre-paid for, so yes it can have stickers on it. You can just scrape them off if you don't want them.

Thank you. CSGoStash is very nice. :v:

I have a bunch of things I'm curious about, but I'll keep it brief for now.

Which varieties are most likely to keep their value or increase it over the next few years? StatTrak? Wear level? The rarest skins or the most common skins? I assume it will depend a lot on the game's shifting popularity. But the price levels are puzzling - sometimes the more expensive designs don't seem that great to look at.

A TURGID FATSO
Jan 27, 2004

Here's to ya, JACKASS
iirc csgostash was run by a goon at some point.

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


PirateBob posted:

Which varieties are most likely to keep their value or increase it over the next few years? StatTrak? Wear level? The rarest skins or the most common skins? I assume it will depend a lot on the game's shifting popularity. But the price levels are puzzling - sometimes the more expensive designs don't seem that great to look at.

I'm not sure how much you already know so I'm gonna keep this explanation as general as possible. This one's a much more complicated question to answer and it will depend from skin to skin but a general rule is usually the older a skin is, the more expensive it will get. Skins can come either from cases or collections. Cases are weekly free drops and you have to pay Valve money to buy a key to open them. The odds in general of opening items are not in your favour; to break it down a knife/pair of gloves from a case is ~1 in 400. You can sometimes hit it big but more likely you'll get a 3 cent skin. Generally, there is a small pool of the most recently released cases that you can get as a free drop as long as you have the Prime Status upgrade, along with a much larger pool of older rarer drops and a small number of fully discontinued drops. This site has a more detailed breakdown of active versus rare versus discontinued cases if you wish to know more. Unless they are extremely rare, usually skins from cases are cheaper because CS players are huge gamblers and open them in massive numbers. When a new case gets added it's best to sell one immediately if you get it and wait a few months to a year for prices to stabilize on any new skins you want.

Collections work a little differently; they're usually either themed around an idea or a map. The most famous collection is probably the Cobblestone collection, due to the extremely rare AWP Dragon Lore. Items from these are a lot rarer because they have a larger number of skins to pull from: where a knife is ~1 in 400, pulling a Dragon Lore is ~1 in 4000. Most times collections skins are drops from operations (time limited events), though in the past Valve recycled skins between operations so some of these exist in pretty large numbers. Some map collection skins that no longer drop in any other form can still be pulled from souvenir cases from majors. As an example, Cobblestone skins were dropping in operations until Operation Hydra ended but there was still a period of time when it was still an active duty map and you could get a lucky Cobblestone souvenir drop.

Aside from looks (which are subjective) and age, there's also tradeups to consider. If you see a randomly expensive ugly skin of low rarity then it's very highly likely that it's tradeup fodder for a much more expensive skin. One example is the Negev Mjolnir which is so rare and expensive that CSGO Stash has no recorded price for it but other third party places have it priced around $2000 USD. It doesn't look particularly good but it trades up to the extremely rare AWP Gungnir.

There's no hard and fast rule of what's going to increase more over anything else, but most items hold their value over time unless Valve does something to make people lose confidence, which they haven't done in a while. I would say, generally, higher rarity skins for guns everyone uses (AK, the M4s, AWP, Deagle, USP, Glock) in good float will be the safest bets. Stattrak guns hold more value than non stattrak, but stattrak knives are less popular.

UnknownMercenary fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Dec 4, 2023

Unbound
Dec 11, 2012

Atlantis for best map

All others are bugged...
.

Unbound fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 16, 2024

Budzilla
Oct 14, 2007

We can all learn from our past mistakes.

PirateBob posted:

Which varieties are most likely to keep their value or increase it over the next few years? StatTrak? Wear level? The rarest skins or the most common skins? I assume it will depend a lot on the game's shifting popularity. But the price levels are puzzling - sometimes the more expensive designs don't seem that great to look at.
I wrote up a big post for the new CS2 thread and since we are not getting it I will post it here.

:thunkgun: Counter-Stike Skins: buying and selling pixels :thunkgun:

This post will be mainly about buying and selling skins along with creating them through unboxing and trade ups. Since the basics of skins has been done to death everywhere I will just link this video since it covers the subject quite well. The main flaw with this video is him suggesting you watch a Sparkles video. Don't do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BCjmj4Mzw

Or if you have some spare time please read the Overpay Guide. It's 140 pages but it was written by a skin maker that covers everything. It's not a huge time sink either since a fair amount is about how to design your own skins(not applicable for this post) and there are lots of pictures which make it perfect for the average CS player. If you have a question about skins it is probably answered there.

If you have a phone (of course you do). Install the Steam app. This allows Two Factor Authentication (2FA), so trading is safer, easier and faster. Check the links down below.

Be aware! CS2 has been released and 'porting' all the skins over from CS:GO has had a mixed reception. Be careful with what you buy based on how it looks now, Valve might change the look, they have done it before and will probably do it again.

:20bux: Buying and Selling :20bux:
Common terms:
Commodity – An item that is the same for all types. That leaves out weapons skins, knives and gloves. However cases, stickers, music kits, etc.. fall under this category. Check the links below for a multi sell url for these items.
Overpay – Paying more for an item for reasons (eg rare pattern). Overpaying happens a lot in trading when you want a better item you might have to trade more than market price to get what you want. Eg. I traded 11 x $10 stickers for 1 x $95 AWP. I overpayed $15
Underpay – The opposite
BUFF Price – Check down further
Buy order price – Normally used for the Steam Community Market (SCM) but any place that supports it. You put money upfront to buy an item. Obviously this is less than the cheapest listed price on the market. Not a guarantee that you will get the item. For selling it means you will sell your item instantly.
Liquidity – How quickly it will sell at market price.
Tradelock – As soon as you get a new item in your inventory whether though unboxing, trade, third party site, etc... it must stay in your inventory for 7 days with two exceptions. Using the tradelocked skin to trade up to a new one or selling it on the SCM.
VAC/Community/Trade/Game Ban– The first three types of bans will result in your CS inventory being permanently locked, a Game ban for another game won't do that but be careful. I type 'permanently locked' because there have been very select cases where some of these have been reversed. Don't bother asking for help here or anywhere, we can't help you.

:steam: Places to buy skins :steam:
Counter-Stike Store
The in-game store page (not the steam app store page). The place to buy certain commodity items directly from Valve. Unlike every other place to buy items everything here is generated on the point of sale. So if you are dumb enough and rich enough to buy limitless Warowl stickers you can do that. Apart from purchasing major viewing passes, major sticker capsules on sale, tags and storage containers there are zero reasons to look at this page.

Steam Community Marketplace(SCM)
The most popular and well known way to buy items this differs from the ingame store page since you are buying items from other players. However it does not have the widest variety of items of all the markets. Safe, secure and you don't have to wait for a tradelock expiry to sell items. Great? Not really. Items selling on the SCM are usually the most expensive of all the options. The other problem is that you cannot cash out your items on SCM. It gets turned into wallet funds that can be spent on more items or games in the Steam store. This is good if you don't play CS anymore and you want to get rid of your knife for more HoI4 DLC during a summer sale but you have been warned. Also there is the 15% Valve tax. So if you sell a knife for $1000 on SCM you will only get $850. You can imagine why Gabe Newell is a billionaire. Finally SCM only allows a maximum list price of $2000USD.

CASH OUT SITES
These sites are places where you can sell your skins for money and withdraw that money to your CC, Crypto, bank account, etc... Read each site's options to see what suits you best. Since they all have different buyer and seller fees take that into account before you make a decision. Check the Reddit whitelist too.

Peer to Peer(P2P)
Since items can be gifted (one user sends something to another player for nothing) in Steam these sites step in an intermediary between buyer and seller. You list an item in your inventory on the website, someone buys it with the funds they have deposited on that website. The website will send you a trade request and the trade is completed. Most of these sites require Steam's API key, please be careful with who you share your API key with, if scammers get hold of it they can really gently caress you over. The main disadvantage of these sites is that you have to wait for the seller to send the item after they receive the notification, although in my experience it usually is a quick turnaround. You will need to provide a tradelink on your profile for that website.
Notable sites: CSFloat, BUFF163

Bot Marketplace
A site that lists all the items it has in its bot Steam inventories for sale. You select which ones you want to buy and buy them. If the item is not on trade lock you can withdraw the item, the bot that has the item will send you a trade offer with whatever it is you want. If you have a lot of stuff to sell that is only worth a few dollars each this is your best option, especially if you don't need the money now. Much better than selling 100x$1 item on a bot marketplace than dealing with 100 separate trade requests on a P2P site.
Notable sites: Bitskins, Skinport

Cash Trader
The easiest way to get scammed but the fastest way to get money. If you are desperate for money you can instantly sell your skins to a cash trader. There are reliable people out there who have made a name for themselves but there are lots of assholes out there. If you need a recommendation I can point you in the right direction. These guys want to make money off this so they will definitely pay you the least out of the options mentioned here. This is important, if someone offers you $500 for a $300 knife then it is likely that they are a scammer unless there is something special with your knife.

Example I Pulled from my rear end
I unboxed some gloves and I look it up on Steam. It is listed for $1000 there with a similar float and pattern! How much actual cash can I expect for it? Something along these lines
$1000 SCM
$950 P2P/Bot Marketplace
$920 BUFF163
$810 Cash trader

Now if you were paying attention you can see that I listed a BUFF163 price even though it is a P2P website. This is called Buff price. BUFF163 is a Chinese marketplace and it is huge. There are more items on here than SCM since there are no limitations to the sale price. It makes it an ideal place to look up how much an item might be worth since someone is probably selling it. BUFF163 has a major sticking point, unless you are a Chinese national you cannot deposit or withdraw funds on the website, this forces you to sell items on the website to others for BUFF wallet balance or go to a BUFF balance trader to sell you balance.

It should be noted that how these prices are listed are not always in this order. Someone might fat finger a knife sale in the SCM and sell a butterfly knife for $115 not $1150. Or someone might not realise what they have a valuable pattern and underestimated the price. I would recommend that you demand a higher price first when selling since you can always reduce it if it doesn't sell.

:capitalism: Scammers :capitalism:
If you have a nice item you may have contacted by a scammer through a comment on your profile or on Discord. Just a few common tactics.

-Offering a really good price on your item and the only reason is that they “really want it”. If it is too good to be true that means it is. Your item might be a rare pattern or there is something else special with it but if they can't be specific to why they want to overpay for your item then it is a scammer.

-Discuss the trade over Discord. Since Valve can't retrieve chats outside Steam this is a good way for scammers to cover their tracks. Although there are many legitimate cash traders that discuss things over Twitter.

-Discussion accounts. Why would these be necessary?

-Dodgy links (Phishing). A scammer might send you a link (a trade link is common) in chat with a typo. This is a red flag to block. This is also how a lot of API scams occur. An example would be if you are logged into Steam in your web browser and a scammer send you a link of a trade but you have to sign in again to “steam” for the trade to go ahead. This is a good reason to have 2FA with the Steam mobile app. Link below.

-Impersonating respectable people. This has happened (scammers have impersonated me for some reason) and overlaps with discussion accounts.

:pcgaming: Gambling Sites :pcgaming:
Don't use them. There is already in game gambling and the history of these websites is beyond awful. Valve recently banned gambling sites in its Steam terms of service too and since these sites normally require your Steam API key Valve will probably tradelock your account if they link your API key with them.

:filez: Creating Skins In Game :filez:

Play the game!?
Each week you can receive a weekly care package after you have ranked up your XP level. You have a choice to select 2 items out of 4 possible ones. You will probably have a choice between a case, a weapon and some graffiti. Most of the weapon skins you can receive through this method are poo poo and are only worth a few cents. Although in rare circumstances you might get something that is worth a few dollars up to a few hundred in freak circumstances.

Case/Container Unboxings

Pretty much gambling. Here are the odds of unboxing items from cases



Yes, that is a 1 in every 384 chance of unboxing a knife or a pair of gloves so unboxing a stattrack knife is 1 in every 3480 case openings. Unboxing a stattrack covert skin is a lot rarer than unboxing a non-stattrack knife. Cases unboxings are terrible way to get the skin you want and expensive too. With cases you need to buy a key (2.50USD) as well to open the case, my advice is to treat these like a scratch lottery card. If you get a drop open it and you are only out by a couple of bucks don't unbox 100s of cases for something good. Just buy the drat thing you want.

Weapon containers are different and have worse odds. Souvenirs containers and the Anibus collection don't require a key to open and have no golds in them too. However, assuming that the collection has the full range of rarity tiers from consumer to covert the odds of opening a covert is less than 1 in 3000.

Operation Points Shop
When CS has an operation you do specific missions or goals to acquire stars to spend at a points shop. You are limited to the amount of stars you can earn each week with missions although you can buy more stars with money. If you spend stars on acquiring a skin from a collection it is the equivalent odds of opening a container, so poo poo. Entrance fee is 15USD.
:stonks:
Trade Ups
:stonks:
You have 10 skins of the same rarity tier and category (normal or stattrack). You put them into a “contact” and a skin from the next higher rarity will turn up in your inventory and previous skins will disappear. Some questions I will pre-emptively answer:
Q: Can I trade up to a knife?
A: No. That was a stupid joke. It also points out you cannot add 10 Covert skins to a contact since there is no skin tier above it.

Q: Can I use stattrack and non-stattrack skins in the same contract?
A: No.

Q: Can I use souvenirs?
A: No.

Q: Can I mix case collection skins and map collection skins in the same contract?
A: Yes!

Q: I have a skin from a map collection and it is the highest tier in that collection even though it is only Restricted, can I use it for trade ups?
A: No. The inputs for the trade up require a higher tier to be allowed for use in a contract.

Doing trade ups isn't difficult but you need to understand managing risk and float values. I will go into detail since so many people keep loving it up. Although it can be funny when it all goes wrong.



It looks quite dumb? I want a MP7 Whiteout in Factory New (FN) condition but even though I managed to input all the lowest possible float the output is still Minimal Wear (MW) and is a huge L. So I have to get smart(er) about it.



As you can see I now managed to find a solution to get myself a FN Whiteout worth hundreds! However you can see the catch – there is only a 5% chance to get it and everything else is a huge loss. There are many skins in CSGO that have these weird properties that make them very difficult or near impossible to get with trade ups. The Whiteout (and many older map collection skins) has a float range of 0.06-0.80 so getting it in FN condition you need to have a total float value for all 10 input skins combined to equal 0.13499 or less. So if the input skins from a lower tier have the same sort of float cap you have to start taking risks and using other skins as filler that don't have this limitation. The MP7 Whiteout is considered one of the most extremely high risk and dumb trade ups to do in the game. Here is a better one.



The AK Pinstripe from the Bank Collection is the bad result while the others from the Control Collection are good. Look at the odds. Only 1 of the 10 input skins in the contract is a Control skin while the chances of hitting a restricted Control skin is 25%. Each individual output is counted from each individual input. So (3[Control output]x1[Control input]) + (1[Bank output]x9[Bank input]) = 12 possible outputs with 3 chances of success. This is how you start to exploit the contract. Take it 1 step further.



As you can see I have increased my probability of hitting the collection to over 42% but I have not doubled my chances with the same formula. (3x2) + (1x8) = 14 possible outputs with 6 chances of success.

The Bank Collection is a good filler collection at certain rarity tiers because there is only 1 skin above it. Others include Italy, Arms Deal2/3, Train, Safehouse.

General Factors That Go Into the Price of an Item
These factors aren't in any particular order. Since the examples will always have exceptions.

Scarcity
How rare an item is. Certain knives, skins in certain conditions are difficult to get which can greatly increase its price.

This piece of poo poo AK skin is valuable in Factory New condition since it has a float cap of 0.06-0.80.

The Weapon
A skin on a MP7 will be less valuable than the same skin on an AK-47.


Stickers
Sticker crafts can dramatically increase the value of a skin. . Although this can vary wildly. If you have a skin with a popular sticker combination applied the overpay will be less. Checking BUFF163 or other websites for similar crafts is recommended.

Stattrack
Since only 1 in 10 skins unboxed are stattrack they fetch a higher price (a handful of exceptions). Knives that are stattrack are the opposite since a nice knife finish might look like rear end with stattrack counter.

Exterior looks
Certain texture and wear patterns can dramatically effect the price.

This is a blue gem AK. Starting price for something like this is over 20K USD

Age
Some lovely older skins might be hard to get which can inflate their price. Or if a new case is released the new skins will sell for many times their worth for the first few weeks as the supply is limited and people want them.


Souvenirs
Most of these are not worth much. Just because you have a souvenir PP-Bizon with gold stickers that might be worth $300 each (unapplied) doesn't mean you should expect more than a few cents for it.

Float
Skins with the highest/lowest possible float, unusual floats or meme floats can effect the price.

Trade Up Utility
Skins that might look like poo poo might have skins in higher tiers of their collection which are very desired. It is also true for “filler” skins that have lovely skins in the higher tier but the filler skin has advantages to use in the trade up for reasons of cost, float and probability.



Weapons Details

Go into your inventory and inspect the item. Hover your mouse cursor over the “i” at the bottom to bring up details



Finish Style – at the moment CS2 skins say none. In CSGO it told you what sort of style. Not really important.
Finish Catalogue – Just the internal game file number for the item. All AWP Safari Meshes are #827.
Pattern Template – For pattern based skins very important. Although you can probably guess there isn't much difference between Safari mesh patterns. This also determines how the “wear” looks, certain pattern numbers might have dramatically less wear than other patterns at the same float. This is very visible with gloves.
Wear Rating – The float value of the skin.

Inspecting Skins with Links
In Steam inventory pages and 3rd party sites there is an inspect link. If you right click then copy link address and open CS2 you can bring up the ingame web browser (Shift+Tab and the compass icon at the bottom of the overlay) and paste the link into the URL. Close the overlay and you should be able to see the skin in the game.

Legacy Weapon models
For each gun there are 2 types of models. The new one for CS2 and the old one ported over from CSGO. They look pretty similar with some extra features and polygons on the CS2 models. Most skins from CSGO will be kept on the old models. Spray paint, anodized airbrushed, anodized and solid colour skins from CSGO (at the time of writing) seem to be on the new models now. Custom paint jobs and hydrographic skin types get the legacy models. Although there are outliers to these rules such as the original Nuke Collection skins that are all spray paint jobs but the consumer and industrial skins are on the CSGO model while the milspec and restricted skins are on the new model for some reason.

Some useful sites and links
CS Float Database. A list of all publicly known skins sorted by float. Good to find out if your skin has a float rank or is special in someway. Good filters too
Skinport's Float Database. An alternate float database.
CSGOSKINS.GGA good site for tracking prices across multiple well known skin sites. It also has details about each individual skin such as float range, collection, etc...
Reddit Whitelist. CS skin websites have a somewhat notorious reputation. These are sites which have been OK'd by the Reddit community.
CSFloat Trade up calculator. An indispensable tool for calculating trade up odds. There are other sites that do this too.
CS Skin extension for your browser. Handy if you have a large collection of skins, lots of useful features. Developed by a respected skins trader.
Steam API Key. This helps programs and sites manage your inventory. Please be extra loving careful when handing this out, consider to have the same importance as your password to Steam.
Trade URL. A url you can send to others that opens a steam trade window. You will definitely have to share this one with trading sites.
Steam App for Android. If you don't use this app you will have to wait 2 weeks for trades to go through. The 2 factor authentication allows trades to be done instantly.
Steam App for iOS
Steam Multi-sell URL. If you have lots of CSGO cards or other things that are the same item (commodity) with no variation, like cases. Use this link to sell the hundreds of Steam cards you want to dump without going though the pain of selling each one!
CS Case Return on Investment (ROI). A nice website that calculates how much money you will lose when opening cases based on the average cost of the case and its items in the SCM.
Prime drop pool for cases. A list of what cases normally drop in the weekly care package.

UnknownMercenary posted:

This is way more comprehensive than what I threw up in about 20 minutes. The only thing I'd really add is a more detailed explanation on how to avoid API scams (yelling Swedish man drops his act for this video if you're worried about cringe).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZcPUcNOHI

Since that video was made, Valve has added some extra warnings on the mobile app in case it detects a possibly fraudulent trade.

https://twitter.com/TioBruno_cs/status/1666214945954955264

Also the Reddit whitelist is a little outdated; within the past year or so both CS.Deals and Dmarket have come under fire for scamming buyers and sellers being unable to withdraw from their sites.

FUN FACTS ABOUT SKINS
-Valve recently made begging for items against its Steam ToS. This is not a joke.
-The rarest skin in the game is the M4A1-S Imminent Danger. Only 1400 are known to exist.
-All guns have 4 sticker slots except for the R8 Revolver and the Terrorist G3SG1 autorifle, these have 5.
-A very blue case hardened skin is called a “Blue Gem”.
-Taco Truck is the best music kit.
-The Howl was removed from the Huntsman collection but four other skins; P90 Desert Warfare, USP-S Orion, Mac-10 Curse and the CZ Poison Dart were replaced in the collection with different skins. The only way to acquire these skins is through trading or trade ups.
-1.5 million Euros was offered for a Karambit Blue Gem knife. The offer was declined.
-The two most expensive skins in the game are theoretically the AK-47 Stattrack Case Hardened Skin (Factory New) with the 661 pattern aka Scar pattern. The other is a KennyS Souvenir Dragon Lore AWP. Neither exist and may never exist.
-When Valve developed the idea of skins they believed that players would prefer to have wear visible on their guns so that they have individual character. This partially explains why older skin types have a minimum float cap 0.06.
-Katowice 14 stickers might be the most expensive in the game but the rarest stickers are the 100 Thieves stickers from the Boston Major.
-Name tags have a 21 character limit. 21 characters is enough to write a small paragraph in Chinese if you want a longer name for your gun.
-The SSG 08 Blue Spruce is the most common skin in the game.
-The AK Blue Laminate has many Kato14 crafts since it was the common and popular AK skin early in CSGO. If you have one with a Kato14 sticker on it don't be surprised if you get lowballed in an offer for it due to that fact and it's also ugly.


If you have any questions or want me to add to this hit me up. I could do a price check if you need one take it to PM. Chances are I won't buy what you have.

I will do a give away and the price is a skin for each weapon in the game and some will not be crap! Remember what I said at the top of the post about watching Sparkles videos? Look at this screencap

This was shared to me a while back and I know why he is an idiot. PM me the answer to these questions and I will do a random draw from the correct answers at around 5am UTC on Sunday.
1. What skin is Sparkles trying to trade up to?
2. How could have he had made this a better trade up? There is more than 1 correct answer to this question and all correct answers will be considered.
Don't ask for freebies! Check Csgoskins.gg in the links above to help you out!

Budzilla fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Dec 4, 2023

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


Budzilla posted:

I wrote up a big post for the new CS2 thread and since we are not getting it I will post it here.

:thunkgun: Counter-Stike Skins: buying and selling pixels :thunkgun:

This is way more comprehensive than what I threw up in about 20 minutes. The only thing I'd really add is a more detailed explanation on how to avoid API scams (yelling Swedish man drops his act for this video if you're worried about cringe).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZcPUcNOHI

Since that video was made, Valve has added some extra warnings on the mobile app in case it detects a possibly fraudulent trade.

https://twitter.com/TioBruno_cs/status/1666214945954955264

Also the Reddit whitelist is a little outdated; within the past year or so both CS.Deals and Dmarket have come under fire for scamming buyers and sellers being unable to withdraw from their sites.

UnknownMercenary fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Dec 4, 2023

Dongicus
Jun 12, 2015

Budzilla posted:

I wrote up a big post for the new CS2 thread and since we are not getting it I will post it here.

:thunkgun: Counter-Stike Skins: buying and selling pixels :thunkgun:

This post will be mainly about buying and selling skins along with creating them through unboxing and trade ups. Since the basics of skins has been done to death everywhere I will just link this video since it covers the subject quite well. The main flaw with this video is him suggesting you watch a Sparkles video. Don't do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BCjmj4Mzw

Or if you have some spare time please read the Overpay Guide. It's 140 pages but it was written by a skin maker that covers everything. It's not a huge time sink either since a fair amount is about how to design your own skins(not applicable for this post) and there are lots of pictures which make it perfect for the average CS player. If you have a question about skins it is probably answered there.

If you have a phone (of course you do). Install the Steam app. This allows Two Factor Authentication (2FA), so trading is safer, easier and faster. Check the links down below.

Be aware! CS2 has been released and 'porting' all the skins over from CS:GO has had a mixed reception. Be careful with what you buy based on how it looks now, Valve might change the look, they have done it before and will probably do it again.

:20bux: Buying and Selling :20bux:
Common terms:
Commodity – An item that is the same for all types. That leaves out weapons skins, knives and gloves. However cases, stickers, music kits, etc.. fall under this category. Check the links below for a multi sell url for these items.
Overpay – Paying more for an item for reasons (eg rare pattern). Overpaying happens a lot in trading when you want a better item you might have to trade more than market price to get what you want. Eg. I traded 11 x $10 stickers for 1 x $95 AWP. I overpayed $15
Underpay – The opposite
BUFF Price – Check down further
Buy order price – Normally used for the Steam Community Market (SCM) but any place that supports it. You put money upfront to buy an item. Obviously this is less than the cheapest listed price on the market. Not a guarantee that you will get the item. For selling it means you will sell your item instantly.
Liquidity – How quickly it will sell at market price.
Tradelock – As soon as you get a new item in your inventory whether though unboxing, trade, third party site, etc... it must stay in your inventory for 7 days with two exceptions. Using the tradelocked skin to trade up to a new one or selling it on the SCM.
VAC/Community/Trade/Game Ban– The first three types of bans will result in your CS inventory being permanently locked, a Game ban for another game won't do that but be careful. I type 'permanently locked' because there have been very select cases where some of these have been reversed. Don't bother asking for help here or anywhere, we can't help you.

:steam: Places to buy skins :steam:
Counter-Stike Store
The in-game store page (not the steam app store page). The place to buy certain commodity items directly from Valve. Unlike every other place to buy items everything here is generated on the point of sale. So if you are dumb enough and rich enough to buy limitless Warowl stickers you can do that. Apart from purchasing major viewing passes, major sticker capsules on sale, tags and storage containers there are zero reasons to look at this page.

Steam Community Marketplace(SCM)
The most popular and well known way to buy items this differs from the ingame store page since you are buying items from other players. However it does not have the widest variety of items of all the markets. Safe, secure and you don't have to wait for a tradelock expiry to sell items. Great? Not really. Items selling on the SCM are usually the most expensive of all the options. The other problem is that you cannot cash out your items on SCM. It gets turned into wallet funds that can be spent on more items or games in the Steam store. This is good if you don't play CS anymore and you want to get rid of your knife for more HoI4 DLC during a summer sale but you have been warned. Also there is the 15% Valve tax. So if you sell a knife for $1000 on SCM you will only get $850. You can imagine why Gabe Newell is a billionaire. Finally SCM only allows a maximum list price of $2000USD.

CASH OUT SITES
These sites are places where you can sell your skins for money and withdraw that money to your CC, Crypto, bank account, etc... Read each site's options to see what suits you best. Since they all have different buyer and seller fees take that into account before you make a decision. Check the Reddit whitelist too.

Peer to Peer(P2P)
Since items can be gifted (one user sends something to another player for nothing) in Steam these sites step in an intermediary between buyer and seller. You list an item in your inventory on the website, someone buys it with the funds they have deposited on that website. The website will send you a trade request and the trade is completed. Most of these sites require Steam's API key, please be careful with who you share your API key with, if scammers get hold of it they can really gently caress you over. The main disadvantage of these sites is that you have to wait for the seller to send the item after they receive the notification, although in my experience it usually is a quick turnaround. You will need to provide a tradelink on your profile for that website.
Notable sites: CSFloat, BUFF163

Bot Marketplace
A site that lists all the items it has in its bot Steam inventories for sale. You select which ones you want to buy and buy them. If the item is not on trade lock you can withdraw the item, the bot that has the item will send you a trade offer with whatever it is you want. If you have a lot of stuff to sell that is only worth a few dollars each this is your best option, especially if you don't need the money now. Much better than selling 100x$1 item on a bot marketplace than dealing with 100 separate trade requests on a P2P site.
Notable sites: Bitskins, CS.Deals, Skinport

Cash Trader
The easiest way to get scammed but the fastest way to get money. If you are desperate for money you can instantly sell your skins to a cash trader. There are reliable people out there who have made a name for themselves but there are lots of assholes out there. If you need a recommendation I can point you in the right direction. These guys want to make money off this so they will definitely pay you the least out of the options mentioned here. This is important, if someone offers you $500 for a $300 knife then it is likely that they are a scammer unless there is something special with your knife.

Example I Pulled from my rear end
I unboxed some gloves and I look it up on Steam. It is listed for $1000 there with a similar float and pattern! How much actual cash can I expect for it? Something along these lines
$1000 SCM
$950 P2P/Bot Marketplace
$920 BUFF163
$810 Cash trader

Now if you were paying attention you can see that I listed a BUFF163 price even though it is a P2P website. This is called Buff price. BUFF163 is a Chinese marketplace and it is huge. There are more items on here than SCM since there are no limitations to the sale price. It makes it an ideal place to look up how much an item might be worth since someone is probably selling it. BUFF163 has a major sticking point, unless you are a Chinese national you cannot deposit or withdraw funds on the website, this forces you to sell items on the website to others for BUFF wallet balance or go to a BUFF balance trader to sell you balance.

It should be noted that how these prices are listed are not always in this order. Someone might fat finger a knife sale in the SCM and sell a butterfly knife for $115 not $1150. Or someone might not realise what they have a valuable pattern and underestimated the price. I would recommend that you demand a higher price first when selling since you can always reduce it if it doesn't sell.

:capitalism: Scammers :capitalism:
If you have a nice item you may have contacted by a scammer through a comment on your profile or on Discord. Just a few common tactics.

-Offering a really good price on your item and the only reason is that they “really want it”. If it is too good to be true that means it is. Your item might be a rare pattern or there is something else special with it but if they can't be specific to why they want to overpay for your item then it is a scammer.

-Discuss the trade over Discord. Since Valve can't retrieve chats outside Steam this is a good way for scammers to cover their tracks. Although there are many legitimate cash traders that discuss things over Twitter.

-Discussion accounts. Why would these be necessary?

-Dodgy links (Phishing). A scammer might send you a link (a trade link is common) in chat with a typo. This is a red flag to block. This is also how a lot of API scams occur. An example would be if you are logged into Steam in your web browser and a scammer send you a link of a trade but you have to sign in again to “steam” for the trade to go ahead. This is a good reason to have 2FA with the Steam mobile app. Link below.

-Impersonating respectable people. This has happened (scammers have impersonated me for some reason) and overlaps with discussion accounts.

:pcgaming: Gambling Sites :pcgaming:
Don't use them. There is already in game gambling and the history of these websites is beyond awful. Valve recently banned gambling sites in its Steam terms of service too and since these sites normally require your Steam API key Valve will probably tradelock your account if they link your API key with them.

:filez: Creating Skins In Game :filez:

Play the game!?
Each week you can receive a weekly care package after you have ranked up your XP level. You have a choice to select 2 items out of 4 possible ones. You will probably have a choice between a case, a weapon and some graffiti. Most of the weapon skins you can receive through this method are poo poo and are only worth a few cents. Although in rare circumstances you might get something that is worth a few dollars up to a few hundred in freak circumstances.

Case/Container Unboxings

Pretty much gambling. Here are the odds of unboxing items from cases



Yes, that is a 1 in every 384 chance of unboxing a knife or a pair of gloves so unboxing a stattrack knife is 1 in every 3480 case openings. Unboxing a stattrack covert skin is a lot rarer than unboxing a non-stattrack knife. Cases unboxings are terrible way to get the skin you want and expensive too. With cases you need to buy a key (2.50USD) as well to open the case, my advice is to treat these like a scratch lottery card. If you get a drop open it and you are only out by a couple of bucks don't unbox 100s of cases for something good. Just buy the drat thing you want.

Weapon containers are different and have worse odds. Souvenirs containers and the Anibus collection don't require a key to open and have no golds in them too. However, assuming that the collection has the full range of rarity tiers from consumer to covert the odds of opening a covert is less than 1 in 3000.

Operation Points Shop
When CS has an operation you do specific missions or goals to acquire stars to spend at a points shop. You are limited to the amount of stars you can earn each week with missions although you can buy more stars with money. If you spend stars on acquiring a skin from a collection it is the equivalent odds of opening a container, so poo poo. Entrance fee is 15USD.
:stonks:
Trade Ups
:stonks:
You have 10 skins of the same rarity tier and category (normal or stattrack). You put them into a “contact” and a skin from the next higher rarity will turn up in your inventory and previous skins will disappear. Some questions I will pre-emptively answer:
Q: Can I trade up to a knife?
A: No. That was a stupid joke. It also points out you cannot add 10 Covert skins to a contact since there is no skin tier above it.

Q: Can I use stattrack and non-stattrack skins in the same contract?
A: No.

Q: Can I use souvenirs?
A: No.

Q: Can I mix case collection skins and map collection skins in the same contract?
A: Yes!

Q: I have a skin from a map collection and it is the highest tier in that collection even though it is only Restricted, can I use it for trade ups?
A: No. The inputs for the trade up require a higher tier to be allowed for use in a contract.

Doing trade ups isn't difficult but you need to understand managing risk and float values. I will go into detail since so many people keep loving it up. Although it can be funny when it all goes wrong.



It looks quite dumb? I want a MP7 Whiteout in Factory New (FN) condition but even though I managed to input all the lowest possible float the output is still Minimal Wear (MW) and is a huge L. So I have to get smart(er) about it.



As you can see I now managed to find a solution to get myself a FN Whiteout worth hundreds! However you can see the catch – there is only a 5% chance to get it and everything else is a huge loss. There are many skins in CSGO that have these weird properties that make them very difficult or near impossible to get with trade ups. The Whiteout (and many older map collection skins) has a float range of 0.06-0.80 so getting it in FN condition you need to have a total float value for all 10 input skins combined to equal 0.13499 or less. So if the input skins from a lower tier have the same sort of float cap you have to start taking risks and using other skins as filler that don't have this limitation. The MP7 Whiteout is considered one of the most extremely high risk and dumb trade ups to do in the game. Here is a better one.



The AK Pinstripe from the Bank Collection is the bad result while the others from the Control Collection are good. Look at the odds. Only 1 of the 10 input skins in the contract is a Control skin while the chances of hitting a restricted Control skin is 25%. Each individual output is counted from each individual input. So (3[Control output]x1[Control input]) + (1[Bank output]x9[Bank input]) = 12 possible outputs with 3 chances of success. This is how you start to exploit the contract. Take it 1 step further.



As you can see I have increased my probability of hitting the collection to over 42% but I have not doubled my chances with the same formula. (3x2) + (1x8) = 14 possible outputs with 6 chances of success.

The Bank Collection is a good filler collection at certain rarity tiers because there is only 1 skin above it. Others include Italy, Arms Deal2/3, Train, Safehouse.

General Factors That Go Into the Price of an Item
These factors aren't in any particular order. Since the examples will always have exceptions.

Scarcity
How rare an item is. Certain knives, skins in certain conditions are difficult to get which can greatly increase its price.

This piece of poo poo AK skin is valuable in Factory New condition since it has a float cap of 0.06-0.80.

The Weapon
A skin on a MP7 will be less valuable than the same skin on an AK-47.


Stickers
Sticker crafts can dramatically increase the value of a skin. . Although this can vary wildly. If you have a skin with a popular sticker combination applied the overpay will be less. Checking BUFF163 or other websites for similar crafts is recommended.

Stattrack
Since only 1 in 10 skins unboxed are stattrack they fetch a higher price (a handful of exceptions). Knives that are stattrack are the opposite since a nice knife finish might look like rear end with stattrack counter.

Exterior looks
Certain texture and wear patterns can dramatically effect the price.

This is a blue gem AK. Starting price for something like this is over 20K USD

Age
Some lovely older skins might be hard to get which can inflate their price. Or if a new case is released the new skins will sell for many times their worth for the first few weeks as the supply is limited and people want them.


Souvenirs
Most of these are not worth much. Just because you have a souvenir PP-Bizon with gold stickers that might be worth $300 each (unapplied) doesn't mean you should expect more than a few cents for it.

Float
Skins with the highest/lowest possible float, unusual floats or meme floats can effect the price.

Trade Up Utility
Skins that might look like poo poo might have skins in higher tiers of their collection which are very desired. It is also true for “filler” skins that have lovely skins in the higher tier but the filler skin has advantages to use in the trade up for reasons of cost, float and probability.



Weapons Details

Go into your inventory and inspect the item. Hover your mouse cursor over the “i” at the bottom to bring up details



Finish Style – at the moment CS2 skins say none. In CSGO it told you what sort of style. Not really important.
Finish Catalogue – Just the internal game file number for the item. All AWP Safari Meshes are #827.
Pattern Template – For pattern based skins very important. Although you can probably guess there isn't much difference between Safari mesh patterns. This also determines how the “wear” looks, certain pattern numbers might have dramatically less wear than other patterns at the same float. This is very visible with gloves.
Wear Rating – The float value of the skin.

Inspecting Skins with Links
In Steam inventory pages and 3rd party sites there is an inspect link. If you right click then copy link address and open CS2 you can bring up the ingame web browser (Shift+Tab and the compass icon at the bottom of the overlay) and paste the link into the URL. Close the overlay and you should be able to see the skin in the game.

Legacy Weapon models
For each gun there are 2 types of models. The new one for CS2 and the old one ported over from CSGO. They look pretty similar with some extra features and polygons on the CS2 models. Most skins from CSGO will be kept on the old models. Spray paint, anodized airbrushed, anodized and solid colour skins from CSGO (at the time of writing) seem to be on the new models now. Custom paint jobs and hydrographic skin types get the legacy models. Although there are outliers to these rules such as the original Nuke Collection skins that are all spray paint jobs but the consumer and industrial skins are on the CSGO model while the milspec and restricted skins are on the new model for some reason.

Some useful sites and links
CS Float Database. A list of all publicly known skins sorted by float. Good to find out if your skin has a float rank or is special in someway. Good filters too
Skinport's Float Database. An alternate float database.
CSGOSKINS.GGA good site for tracking prices across multiple well known skin sites. It also has details about each individual skin such as float range, collection, etc...
Reddit Whitelist. CS skin websites have a somewhat notorious reputation. These are sites which have been OK'd by the Reddit community.
CSFloat Trade up calculator. An indispensable tool for calculating trade up odds. There are other sites that do this too.
CS Skin extension for your browser. Handy if you have a large collection of skins, lots of useful features. Developed by a respected skins trader.
Steam API Key. This helps programs and sites manage your inventory. Please be extra loving careful when handing this out, consider to have the same importance as your password to Steam.
Trade URL. A url you can send to others that opens a steam trade window. You will definitely have to share this one with trading sites.
Steam App for Android. If you don't use this app you will have to wait 2 weeks for trades to go through. The 2 factor authentication allows trades to be done instantly.
Steam App for iOS
Steam Multi-sell URL. If you have lots of CSGO cards or other things that are the same item (commodity) with no variation, like cases. Use this link to sell the hundreds of Steam cards you want to dump without going though the pain of selling each one!
CS Case Return on Investment (ROI). A nice website that calculates how much money you will lose when opening cases based on the average cost of the case and its items in the SCM.
Prime drop pool for cases. A list of what cases normally drop in the weekly care package.

FUN FACTS ABOUT SKINS
-Valve recently made begging for items against its Steam ToS. This is not a joke.
-The rarest skin in the game is the M4A1-S Imminent Danger. Only 1400 are known to exist.
-All guns have 4 sticker slots except for the R8 Revolver and the Terrorist G3SG1 autorifle, these have 5.
-A very blue case hardened skin is called a “Blue Gem”.
-Taco Truck is the best music kit.
-The Howl was removed from the Huntsman collection but four other skins; P90 Desert Warfare, USP-S Orion, Mac-10 Curse and the CZ Poison Dart were replaced in the collection with different skins. The only way to acquire these skins is through trading or trade ups.
-1.5 million Euros was offered for a Karambit Blue Gem knife. The offer was declined.
-The two most expensive skins in the game are theoretically the AK-47 Stattrack Case Hardened Skin (Factory New) with the 661 pattern aka Scar pattern. The other is a KennyS Souvenir Dragon Lore AWP. Neither exist and may never exist.
-When Valve developed the idea of skins they believed that players would prefer to have wear visible on their guns so that they have individual character. This partially explains why older skin types have a minimum float cap 0.06.
-Katowice 14 stickers might be the most expensive in the game but the rarest stickers are the 100 Thieves stickers from the Boston Major.
-Name tags have a 21 character limit. 21 characters is enough to write a small paragraph in Chinese if you want a longer name for your gun.
-The SSG 08 Blue Spruce is the most common skin in the game.
-The AK Blue Laminate has many Kato14 crafts since it was the common and popular AK skin early in CSGO. If you have one with a Kato14 sticker on it don't be surprised if you get lowballed in an offer for it due to that fact and it's also ugly.


If you have any questions or want me to add to this hit me up. I could do a price check if you need one take it to PM. Chances are I won't buy what you have.

I will do a give away and the price is a skin for each weapon in the game and some will not be crap! Remember what I said at the top of the post about watching Sparkles videos? Look at this screencap

This was shared to me a while back and I know why he is an idiot. PM me the answer to these questions and I will do a random draw from the correct answers at around 5am UTC on Sunday.
1. What skin is Sparkles trying to trade up to?
2. How could have he had made this a better trade up? There is more than 1 correct answer to this question and all correct answers will be considered.
Don't ask for freebies! Check Csgoskins.gg in the links above to help you out!

i play with skins off

Budzilla
Oct 14, 2007

We can all learn from our past mistakes.

Dongicus posted:

i play with skins off

Not everyone in life is a sex haver.

UnknownMercenary posted:

This is way more comprehensive than what I threw up in about 20 minutes. The only thing I'd really add is a more detailed explanation on how to avoid API scams (yelling Swedish man drops his act for this video if you're worried about cringe).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZcPUcNOHI

Since that video was made, Valve has added some extra warnings on the mobile app in case it detects a possibly fraudulent trade.

https://twitter.com/TioBruno_cs/status/1666214945954955264

Also the Reddit whitelist is a little outdated; within the past year or so both CS.Deals and Dmarket have come under fire for scamming buyers and sellers being unable to withdraw from their sites.

Ty for the headsup. Will edit

Budzilla fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Dec 4, 2023

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003
Long posts! :stare: Will read later!


I bought my first skins today. The market wasn't as crappy as I had initially thought. I got some nice ones with StatTrak and minimal wear for as little as 50 cents a piece! :classiclol:


I made one much more expensive buy, a Cartel AK-47 at almost $13. Now I'm half wishing I had bought the Legion of Anubis skin instead. They're both pretty cool.

Audax
Dec 1, 2005
"LOL U GOT OWNED"
some people are saying anubis is the new inferno

meowmeowmeowmeow
Jan 4, 2017
if you're napping on the sub.io tournament you shouldnt be, killer games so far

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003
The newest nvidia driver (546.29) might be leading to VAC bans, lol.

Unbound
Dec 11, 2012

Atlantis for best map

All others are bugged...
.

Unbound fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Feb 16, 2024

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003

UnknownMercenary posted:

I'm not sure how much you already know so I'm gonna keep this explanation as general as possible. This one's a much more complicated question to answer and it will depend from skin to skin but a general rule is usually the older a skin is, the more expensive it will get. Skins can come either from cases or collections. Cases are weekly free drops and you have to pay Valve money to buy a key to open them. The odds in general of opening items are not in your favour; to break it down a knife/pair of gloves from a case is ~1 in 400. You can sometimes hit it big but more likely you'll get a 3 cent skin. Generally, there is a small pool of the most recently released cases that you can get as a free drop as long as you have the Prime Status upgrade, along with a much larger pool of older rarer drops and a small number of fully discontinued drops. This site has a more detailed breakdown of active versus rare versus discontinued cases if you wish to know more. Unless they are extremely rare, usually skins from cases are cheaper because CS players are huge gamblers and open them in massive numbers. When a new case gets added it's best to sell one immediately if you get it and wait a few months to a year for prices to stabilize on any new skins you want.

Collections work a little differently; they're usually either themed around an idea or a map. The most famous collection is probably the Cobblestone collection, due to the extremely rare AWP Dragon Lore. Items from these are a lot rarer because they have a larger number of skins to pull from: where a knife is ~1 in 400, pulling a Dragon Lore is ~1 in 4000. Most times collections skins are drops from operations (time limited events), though in the past Valve recycled skins between operations so some of these exist in pretty large numbers. Some map collection skins that no longer drop in any other form can still be pulled from souvenir cases from majors. As an example, Cobblestone skins were dropping in operations until Operation Hydra ended but there was still a period of time when it was still an active duty map and you could get a lucky Cobblestone souvenir drop.

Aside from looks (which are subjective) and age, there's also tradeups to consider. If you see a randomly expensive ugly skin of low rarity then it's very highly likely that it's tradeup fodder for a much more expensive skin. One example is the Negev Mjolnir which is so rare and expensive that CSGO Stash has no recorded price for it but other third party places have it priced around $2000 USD. It doesn't look particularly good but it trades up to the extremely rare AWP Gungnir.

There's no hard and fast rule of what's going to increase more over anything else, but most items hold their value over time unless Valve does something to make people lose confidence, which they haven't done in a while. I would say, generally, higher rarity skins for guns everyone uses (AK, the M4s, AWP, Deagle, USP, Glock) in good float will be the safest bets. Stattrak guns hold more value than non stattrak, but stattrak knives are less popular.

Thank you for the writeup.

So if I have it right - common cases will only ever drop in value after they are added to the game. There's a negative ROI if you buy a key for them. Best to sell them immediately. Rare cases and rare skins might increase in value over the years?

What is a trade-up? Why would someone give up a higher value skin in exchange for a lesser one?

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


PirateBob posted:

Thank you for the writeup.

So if I have it right - common cases will only ever drop in value after they are added to the game. There's a negative ROI if you buy a key for them. Best to sell them immediately. Rare cases and rare skins might increase in value over the years?

What is a trade-up? Why would someone give up a higher value skin in exchange for a lesser one?

Yes, commonly dropping cases and their skins will stabilize in price over the period of time while they're still active drops. As an example, I bought a minimal wear AK Nightwish skin earlier this year for what I thought was an ok price because the case had already been out for a year by then and wanted a nicer version over my battlescarred one. Now at the end of the year it's dropped even further in value because the case gets opened a lot and there are many Nightwish skins being opened.

Trade-ups are covered more thoroughly in Budzilla's big effort post but you're basically gambling on getting a really good skin out of trading up 10 lesser skins. You can mix and match different skins from different sources which is why there are good and bad outcomes. Typically you have a few skins from the case/collection that you want to target, and a bunch of cheap skins from other places to fill out the 10 required.

PirateBob
Jun 14, 2003

UnknownMercenary posted:

Yes, commonly dropping cases and their skins will stabilize in price over the period of time while they're still active drops. As an example, I bought a minimal wear AK Nightwish skin earlier this year for what I thought was an ok price because the case had already been out for a year by then and wanted a nicer version over my battlescarred one. Now at the end of the year it's dropped even further in value because the case gets opened a lot and there are many Nightwish skins being opened.

Trade-ups are covered more thoroughly in Budzilla's big effort post but you're basically gambling on getting a really good skin out of trading up 10 lesser skins. You can mix and match different skins from different sources which is why there are good and bad outcomes. Typically you have a few skins from the case/collection that you want to target, and a bunch of cheap skins from other places to fill out the 10 required.

Ok, I read the part about tradeups in that post. So the trade happens against "the house" automatically and with random chance involved? Not against another person.

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


Yeah you're not doing it with anyone else.

Unbound
Dec 11, 2012

Atlantis for best map

All others are bugged...
Think of trade ups more like a crafting system. Takes 10 skins of a rarity to craft 1 skin of the next rarity up.

Push El Burrito
May 9, 2006

Soiled Meat
The best dollar-to-good skin ratio is the Wasteland Princess Sawed Off. This is just objective fact.

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


Yeah but then you have to use the sawed off.

Wowporn
May 31, 2012

HarumphHarumphHarumph
I like the R8 Junkyard and iirc it was like a dollar or less for a stattrack. Every skin I have I bought with money from selling cases so I forget how much some are worth but very few were more than a dollar

See also the m4a1 leaded glass the previous owner had renamed "gay gun" that was like $1-3 I think

Cactus Ghost
Dec 20, 2003

you can actually inflate your scrote pretty safely with sterile saline, syringes, needles, and aseptic technique. its a niche kink iirc

the saline just slowly gets absorbed into your blood but in the meantime you got a big round smooth distended nutsack

do yall do any shooting the bad guys or is this game just designer handbags for dudes who vape

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Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
you already know the answer

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