Bought the skin, but haven’t bought the skill. We’ve all met players like that, right? Those guys with Dragon Lore and 0% accuracy with it. They ruin your games and you keep wondering, why would they need pricey skins if they have no idea how to play anyway. Are skin’s cost and in-game skill really independent from one another?
We’ve decided to check whether or not that is true and invoked some help from our colleagues. The CS.MONEY Blog tells you how the inventory cost increases along with a player’s skill.
This research was conducted by analysts from SCOPE.GG project – click the link and find out everything about your CS:GO stats.
How much do player inventories cost in CS:GO?
Just like in real life, CS:GO has its rich and not so rich population. You can find examples of both silvers with inventories worth of an Italian villa and globals with default skins who never bought a skin or opened a case. And yet there’s still a correlation on the overall inventory cost.
First of all, we’ve decided to gather information about the value of player inventories. We’ll cover the methods involved at the end of the article.
This graph shows the average inventory cost on every CS:GO rank. So is it true that the “whales” really dwell on higher ranks? Seems logical, the more you play and the higher your skill is, the more you want to spice up your gameplay with new weapon and player model skins.
So the average inventory value among globals is around $1200.
Take a look at the spike among Silver 4 players. We don’t have any data on why this spike happened. Perhaps some players on this rank decided that skins are more important for them than a regular CS:GO training.
There’s a caveat in this data, however. If one player has an inventory with a value of $0 and another with a value of $1000, the average would be $500, right? To make this sample more representative we’ve also found the median value instead of average.
Median represents a value in the middle of the selection of numbers.
On this graph we can see a smoother growth of inventory cost relative to a player’s rank. As we can see, the median inventory value of global is a bit more than $300, a much more realistic number that shows the real situation.
What about the price of a single CS:GO inventory skin?
This graph shows the average value. The cheapest skins are in inventories of lower level players. Seems fair, if you have a low rank that probably means that you don’t play often and you have yet to grow in skill. There’s really no point in buying expensive skins for a game you spend half an hour in after work or school.
According to statistics, average lower rank player would rather buy a cheap AK-47 | Elite Build for a price of up to $2.5, while average global might as well think about buying more expensive one, like AK-47 | Slate for $17.5. By the way, we regularly post various skin loadouts on our blog that are affordable for any player.
Knives and their value in CS:GO player inventories
Knife is a dream of every CS:GO player who is even slightly interested in skins in general. Valve released lots of different unique knife skins with cool animations, so they might be a fancy way to diversify the gameplay. And don’t underestimate the prestige that comes with a knife, who wouldn’t like to flex on their friends with this expensive toy? Alright, let’s take a look at who has knives at all.
According to data shown on this graph, about 10% of Silver 1 players have a knife in their inventories, while for globals value reaches an impressive 60% mark. As a result, you’re more likely to see a player with a knife on higher ranks. If we simplify this data, we could say that in a game with 10 globals 6 of them will have a knife in their inventories (although that’s not quite true according to probability theory).
And here’s the median knife cost among all ranks:
We already did skin loadouts of the cheapest knives in CS:GO more than once and it comes as no surprise that this median price is around $150 on lower ranks, sometimes reaching $250. However, starting with DMG rank, this value steadily grows, and so we have globals who on average are ready to spend $330 for a knife.
And now let’s dive even deeper into the statistics.
The most popular CS:GO knife on higher ranks
Before we’ll show you the actual information, try to guess which knife is the most popular among global players. Are you ready? Check if you were right.
Butterfly Knife | Slaughter is the most popular one among the 3 highest ranks. But of course, it’s animation is probably one of the coolest in the game, while it’s overall look is stylish and dangerous, to get the cheapest knife like this you’d need at least $1256. Just imagine how its owners must love CS:GO and what they’re willing to give for it.
By the way, it should be taken into account that the percentage of globals among the overall player base is not as high as you might think. According to recent data, just 1% of the total player base have the highest CS:GO rank. And so we have fewer people with higher inventory values.
This selection might be unclear. Popularity doesn’t say anything about the actual amount. Do you want more stats? Do you want to know how many globals have a Butterfly Knife in their inventory? Here’s the answer:
Almost 10% of globals have Butterfly Knife. Not necessarily the most expensive one, but we’ve already covered the most popular variant above. The funny thing is that even Silver 1 players do not shy away from buying a knife like it. One may only wonder, what use do they have for a knife such as this on these ranks? But it’s a rhetorical question.
The rarest CS:GO knives
Alright, we’ve figured out the most popular knives, now let’s take a look at the least common ones. It should be said right away that this does not necessarily mean that the knife looks terrible and players show no interest in it. Knives like these can be just too expensive for people who don’t know much about the skins and would rather find a cheaper option.
Bayonet and its skins are the rarest almost on every rank. We’ve made a selection of $1000+ knives, so the price is definitely a factor here. The key to their rarity is in the unique skin pattern of these knives.
If you want to stand out and get the truly unique knife, take a closer look at this selection.
The most popular gloves in CS:GO
More often than not, players are trying to buy skins in a bundle with gloves. As soon as gloves appeared in the game, their price skyrocketed to that of knives.
As we can see from the statistics, Driver Gloves | Racing Green are the most popular ones on almost every rank. They are not the cheapest ones, but do not stand out from the overall design of the game and are visually satisfying.
As the player’s rank grows, so does the price of their gloves. Driver Gloves | Overtake, Driver Gloves | Imperial Plaid and of course Specialist Gloves | Crimson Web are appearing in inventories of Globals and Supremes. “Factory New” versions of these gloves cost exorbitant amounts of money. Whenever you meet a player with something like this, you can be sure that he’s doing well for himself.
The most popular CS:GO skins
SCOPE.GG analysed the most popular skins with a price starting at $1.
We were a bit surprised by the lack of a substantial spread between the lower and higher ranks. For example, both Silver 1 and global players like to play with AWP | Atheris. AK-47 | Redline is also a popular choice among every rank. It serves as further proof that a cool-looking skin doesn’t have to be expensive. Sometimes skin’s value increases due to its rarity, rather than to it being aesthetically pleasing.
To make this selection more demonstrative, we’ve gathered information about the players who have at least one skin costing $1 or more in their inventory. As you can see on the graph below, around 70% of the player base has one.
Skin popularity is also affected by the popularity of any particular weapon itself. For example, the most popular skins are for AK-47 and AWP. About 80% of global ranked players have those.
This graph shows the increasing popularity of M4A4 closer to global rank. However, taking a recent update released by Valve into account, M4A1-S popularity has a pretty good chance to skyrocket due to a significant buff it got, making players more likely to use it.
By the way, now is a good time to fill your inventory with some new toys with a new top up bonus of 40%. What that means is if you add $100 to your account balance, another $40 will be credited on top of that as a bonus. Now you can get a lot more skins for the same amount of money. Here you can take a look at one of the inventory loadouts that you can get with a new top up bonus.
Pistol skins in CS:GO
The situation is a little more complicated with pistols. Let’s take a look at the graph first:
As you can see, Glock-18 has its place in most player inventories. The least popular one is P2000 due to players favoring the silenced USP-S instead.
Is Dragon Lore as cool as people say it is?
The dream of every CS:GO sniper is of course AWP | Dragon Lore. Even people who aren’t frequent CS:GO players know this skin. Do you want to know the percentage of players who own this rare skin? Here’s the graph:
Here we can clearly see that on Global you’re most likely to find a player with this skin, however only about 0.45% of global players have it. On any other rank, the chance of meeting a player with Dragon Lore are about the same as, say, meeting Tyrannosaurus on your way to the store.
For comparison we took three rarest and most expensive AWP skins: Dragon Lore, Medusa and Gungnir. According to our statistics, Dragon Lore is still a go to choice among the Globals. Situation varies on other ranks, however, AWP | Medusa is much more popular on lower ranks.
Globals and their love to rare AK-47 skins
To determine whether or not the fact that higher ranks has more expensive and rare skins is true, we’ve decided to scan the inventories for the AK-47 | Wild Lotus skin. It’s even more rare than the aforementioned Dragon Lore. Here’s what we have found:
Once again statistics prove that the most luxurious and exclusive skins have found their place in the inventories of the highest ranked players. Even among those players only 0.175% are the proud owners of Wild Lotus. Not a single person among Silver 1 ranked players has this skin.
Skin = skill?
No-no-no! It never worked that way and it never will. You won’t be landing those juicy headshots without proper practice and training in the game. Even a million dollar worthy inventory won’t help you with that. Expensive skins are just the way to add some variety to the game that you already spent several thousand hours in. Especially if you know that you’ll spend a couple thousands more in the years to come.
Furthermore, we’ve determined that the value of skins in your inventory doesn’t interfere with the game. Skins are stylish additions to your gameplay that don’t show your aim to become a better player. To make sure, we’ve analysed the ratio of average skin price to inspect key pressed time on different ranks. Here’s what we’ve found out:
Higher ranked players inspect their weapon just as much as the other ranks do, even though their skin price is by far more expensive than Gold Nova’s and others.
Top of the most valuable inventories in CS:GO
As a bonus, we’ve gathered up the most valuable inventories among users that were analysed during the research. Do you want to take a look at those Elon Musks of CS:GO universe? We’re pretty sure you’ll be impressed by those numbers:
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From the our research we can conclude that the higher the player’s skill level is, the higher his desire for individuality and self-realization through unique skins. Higher ranked players love and respect CS:GO and care about their inventory as much as people might follow the fashion trends.
Valuable inventory is not the key to success in the game, however higher skill level makes players more incentivised to buy more expensive skins. It brings much needed variety to a training routine and allows you to stand out in the sea of default and cheaper skins , it allows you to show both your teammates and your opponents that you’ve been here a long time and you should not be trifled with. Just like in real life.
- More than 1 000 000 inventories of CS.MONEY and SCOPE.GG users were analysed during collection of information. This sample of users is specific due to them all being interested in skins and actively playing competitive CS:GO.
- Trader accounts, collectors and bots with skins were not included. Active competitive play was required to be included into research.
- We’ve analysed the average player’s rank, meaning, at the time of research, the player could be a Gold Nova 2 and according to the current information he is Gold Nova 4 now.
- Skins do not reflect actual skill level of players and we were not going to research this aspect because it would not correlate with actual games.
- If you’re media, please mention this article and a link to it in your material, let’s do well for each other. That’s especially important for the SCOPE.GG project.
- This research was conducted during the RipTide collection update (data from 10/17/2021).
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