Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a truly unique shooter, and much of this uniqueness is attributable to its economy. We mean both the in-game economy and the trader ecosystem revolving around skins. Today, CS.MONEY is going to talk about one of the trader’s crucial tools — price tracking.
How are prices of skins determined?
The main rule of pricing is as follows: the rarer the skin, the higher the price. The beauty and history of the skin as well as the reputation of the artist don’t matter whatsoever in price formation.
AUG Syd Mead was created by a legendary futurist artist — and yet it costs less than ten bucks. Akihabara Accept, despite its awesome looks, was created by a much less famous artist (just so far, hopefully). Still, the price of this skin amounts to two thousand dollars.
Some of the skins with a mutable pattern depending on the index have rare patterns. The prices of these latter can be many times higher than the average price for this skin.
How do I track prices?
Now that’s easy. You can track the price by the charts in the Steam Community Market or on our wiki. Our charts are much cooler though: they immediately show the prices of all versions of a particular skin, and you can enable the display of StatTrak prices. To add to it, on our wiki, you can view all the rare patterns. Becase they can cost a lot more, this is a very convenient feature.
Note that the prices of “fresh” skins are barely ever stable. Normally, “newborn” skins are significantly overpriced owing to the surrounding hype. For instance, the prices of AWP Fade decreased by 15-20% a month after the skin appeared in the game. In case of such an expensive item, that’s $150-200 dollars! Be sure to remember about this instability when evaluating new skins.
In which cases can the price change?
The prices of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins rarely change by leaps and bounds. The most vivid example in this regard is M4A4 Howl The price of this skin increased sizeably after it was removed from drop and crafting. However, this is the first — and so far the last — case of a skin getting “banned.”
There are a number of common reasons that can cause the price to change. We’ve already expounded on one of them. Namely, new skins are usually more expensive due to the surrounding hype, but over time, their price begins to slowly decrease until it reaches its normal value determined by the supply-demand ratio on the market.
Another reason why prices of many skins change is the release of new content in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. When a new operation is looming on the horizon, many players get rid of their old skins. This increases the supply and decreases the price — the trend is best seen on popular skins.
Prices of skins can rise with the depletion of their supply. Items from old collections are unlikely to ever appear in the game. That’s why the number of Glock-18 Fade is very limited and more and more of these skins leave the market on the daily basis, ending up in collections or closed inventories. Small wonder the price of the item has tripled in two years!
Finally, the price of a skin can drop owing to a special offer. For example, last year, we did a Double Black Friday and provided sizeable discounts on skins. Holidays like Christmas or special days such as Black Friday usually come bundled with the opportunity to save a little money on your purchase.
Now that you know the factors the price of a skin depends on as well as how to track it, your deals are sure to get as profitable as never before, and maybe you’ll even become a professional trader. When you end up in the big leagues trading your Dragon Lore for Google stocks, be sure to remember us and our good advice. In the meantime, you can thank us by giving this post a like. Good luck!
