Skins could be just a fun aspect to decorate your casual CS matches. But for a particular minority of people, skins have become the meaning of life, a way to earn money, and doors to a fabulous future. CS.MONEY Blog presents a series of interviews with professional traders, asking them all things skins: how they managed to achieve inventories worth close to millions; how difficult it was to start; why it is worth choosing niches; and, most importantly, what will happen to the skins market soon, when CS2 comes out.
Our first guest is Krieke. He’s a very experienced trader and a Blue Gems + Kato14 collector. Krieke is 22 years old, but he started his journey with Team Fortress 2 around almost ten years ago!
In this interview:
- How trading skins taught Krieke Sales and then turned it into a full-fledged career
- His first scammers and the first-ever thousand dollars earned
- Hats in Team Fortress 2 and switching to CS:GO
- Favourite skins and stickers
- Why he decided to work with Blue Gems and Kato14
- How much does he earn a day (spoiler: a lot!)
- The Traders’ Community
- CS2 and its impact on the Market
- And how rich traders/collectors lend skins to pro players
Krieke is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Sales. It was skin trading that helped him decide on his future career: he really liked interacting with people and trying to get the most out of his trades. And nowadays, Krieke doesn’t have a job. Why? He gets about 3.5 thousand dollars passively while owning an inventory worth $250k. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Sit back, relax and give this one a thorough read. It’s worth it.
Part I: Personal life, Sales career, First steps as a trader.
The Beginning of All
Tell us about your passion, Krieke. How it all started for you? Do you remember your first skins and how you got into trading?
When I was kid, probably around the age of 12-14, I used to trade a lot of Team Fortress 2 items and managed to build up a $1000 inventory at the time. I was still underage, so I could only cashout through Steam, where I bought a lot of games with the money. A year later, I got introduced to CS:GO by an old TF2 trading buddy of mine. Afterwards, I got really intrigued by the skins market and it resurrected my love for trading. Since I had nothing to work with at the time, and my parents usually never gave me money to spend on virtual pixels, I had to find a way to get something to get started. This part’s a bit embarrassing.
I went through my friendlist and asked every single one of my old TF2 trading buddies if they had any CS:GO skins lying around they didn’t need. At the end of the day, I got gifted like $5-10 worth of absolute garbage skins, which started my trading journey. I went onto CS:GOLounge, and I just traded and traded like crazy. I also found a community server called Alias Trading which helped me get a lot more volume and it was just super fun talking personally over the microphone to a person and trying your hardest to close a deal as a salesman.
Special Trading Trick
I also had this special trading trick I used to use which I’m actually pretty proud of and made me a LOT of money at the start.
Back in the day, knife types were king in terms of demand and value. If you had a Gut Knife for example and you wanted to get a Flip Knife, you had to overpay because the latter was considered a better tier. Through trading, I noticed that there were two knives that were mostly consistently the same value on the market, but they were different knife types. Which I used to my advantage. The strat went like this: I would get a Gut Knife Safari Mesh Minimal Wear and trade it 1:1 for a Flip Knife Safari Mesh Field Tested which was the same value but considered a better tier by the community. Afterwards, I would trade the Flip Knife for a Gut Knife Safari Mesh Minimal Wear and $20-30 above market. Then I would trade the Gut Knife for the Flip Knife 1:1 again and just do this for a month straight to build my inventory. And it seriously worked every time.
“My love for trading and experience in commerce within CS:GO pushed me to follow this path in my studies.”
Learning to Trade
How can a person get all the knowledge about trading? You can learn trading and patterns and floats, but how to earn money?
Experience is key. You just have to choose a market that suits you in CS:GO like Blue Gems, Katos, floats, liquids, odd patterns, sticker combos, etc. And get really good at it and try to build a reputation. Once you gain a good reputation and some following, the deals will come to you by itself which will make your job a lot easier. Also, consistency and not giving up is a big one. Lots of traders that sometimes have a bad month just simply give up. But how can you grow if you give up? Utilize every possible trading platform and contact people yourself to get a higher chance of securing a deal. Don’t just sit and wait for a miracle to happen.
Networth and Salary
Can trading be profitable enough to survive and not work on ordinary jobs? How do your close ones see your job, if it is a job at all?
I’ve been trading for six years and have built up an inventory worth approximately $250k, which would convert into $3470 a month. So, I do consider it a bit of a job at this point. For people who aren’t active within the community, it’s very very difficult to understand and most of my best friends or family don’t really get the market. I don’t blame them because it is very difficult and confusing unlike any other.
Pride and Skins
What were your most proud moments as a trader? Huge deals? Iconic skins? Connections with pro players?
My proudest moment was probably when my inventory hit $100k. For me, that was an absolute milestone and I never expected to turn a hobby and passion into such a significant sum of money. Another proud moment of mine was acquiring a Dragon Lore Field Tested with an iBUYPOWER holo on the scope. For me, this was an absolute endgame skin as the DLore is my all-time favourite skin, and the iBP holo is my all-time favourite sticker. It was the perfect skin in my eyes.
“Liquids are quite high at the moment due to the Source 2 hype, which I think along the line will correct itself and settle.”
What’s your favourite CS:GO skin? And least favourite?
- Favourite: Dragon Lore because it’s a golden fire-spitting dragon.
- Least favourite: Deagle Oxid Blaze since it’s just a knockoff Deagle Blaze.
Why Blue Gems?
You’re a Blue Gem collector. It’s a very expensive niche. Why would you choose this one?
It’s definitely a luxury goods market which I enjoy a lot. My clients consist of true collectors who also have a passion for skins and a big budget to build a beautiful loadout. I have managed to make a name for myself and build a brand around blue gems, which I’m very proud of. I’m a reseller but also a true collector in the game as in real life, so going this route within trading was natural for me. Specializing in Blue Gems has also helped me stand out from the crowd as not a lot of people have the experience and knowledge about them as I do.
I think everything is quite nicely balanced in today’s market. Some Blue Gems are perhaps a bit too cheap compared to other items but I also like that. Because of this, there are still plenty of more affordable options out there for the more casual player who doesn’t wish to spend 5k USD on a single skin.
Kato14 Collector
You’re also a Kato14 collector. Why is this sticker so iconic in your view? And why is it so expensive?
A Kato14 is just the creme de la creme. The most endgame, oldest sticker in the game, with a rich history and very strong visuals. IBP and Titan are as expensive as they are now due to Titan disbanding because they were overspending and IBP also disbanding because of the infamous throwing scandal. Next to that, as I mentioned above, the Kato14 holo stickers are just very simple & clean and look arguably a lot better than other stickers on the market. That combined with its low supply justifies the price it has nowadays.
Part II: The Community
The Trading Community & Twitter
Can you tell about the trading community? Is it friendly? Do people help each other, and how? Considering it’s still about getting things cheaper and selling higher…
The community can be great but also very stressful and toxic. I love how Twitter is being used nowadays to share CS:GO content and bring the skins community together to show their love for skins. But with a growing market and lots of competition, there’s also a lot of toxicity and fraud. A lot of people try to get an edge over another by trying to destroy each others’ reputations, which I absolutely despise, but at the end of the day it’s business and stuff like this, how unpleasant it can be, happens in any market. With the increase of the market, you also see a lot of new scams every day, which have become harder and harder to counter, especially for newcomers with no experience who can fall for these tricks quite easily. Luckily, there are a lot of people out there who offer help to prevent cases like this, which I have a lot of respect for. I also really like the introduction of community-driven projects like Cantrydevs, Katocraft, Broskins, csgobluegems and csbluegems discord.
Do you like how the system of trading skins works nowadays?
Yeah, I think it’s fine, but trading has slowly disappeared in low-tier trading. It’s all about cash now, which is a bit sad to see because my greatest memories come from just item trading with people. But I do get it, cash will always be king and it’s a lot easier and better for people to do business this way.
“I don’t think Valve should change anything, things are running well the way they are.”
Lending Skins To Pros
Lending skins to pro players is fine, right? But how would you trust to do it? And why do it in the first place? To get history on skins or just establish a connection?
A lot of my friends lend high-tier skins to pros. In all honesty, it’s just for the flex. People love to see their own skins on the big screen viewed by thousands of people which gives them validation and pride. I don’t lend skins myself because I don’t really have a need to showcase my skins that way, and since I trade quite a bit, I’d like to have all of my items myself. If a person approaches me to trade, I have a higher chance of making that happen since I’ve got plenty of options to offer.
Part III: CS2 and Scammers
How have CS2 already affected the Market? All the hype made skins grow. What will happen next?
I suspect there will be another pump when Source 2 officially releases and shortly after a small correction since a lot of people will be selling off their investments. I also think they will definitely introduce a new case when Source 2 launches.
There’s a lot of scammers, unfortunately. What do you think Valve should do and what they can do?
When I was a kid I got scammed in Team Fortress 2 for my first ever Unusual and I was absolutely heartbroken. Valve has improved their ways of combating scammers a lot over the years, but there are just so many and they always find new ways to screw people over. It’s very difficult to counter this issue, and I’m sure Valve keeps on trying to do their best. However, lately, with new scamming precautions in place, lots of traders are getting falsely flagged for leaving comments on people’s Steam profiles. This is a big downside on Valve’s part since innocent people are getting banned daily because their AI thinks regular people commenting have fraudulent intentions, which is clearly not the case. It seems they’re experimenting and trying to find a better way to control this issue.
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You can become a professional trader yourself just like Krieke: find your love for trading and make a living from it. Yes, it’s a bumpy and risky road, but it could be rewarding. Start trading professionally with CS.MONEY and upgrade your inventory! Don’t wait for the CS2 release; start trading now!
