The Katowice 2015 sticker pack dates back to February 2015, it was launched days before the eponymous tournament. Ever since, the stickers have been quite popular not only with the general player base but the trading community in particular, with some members boasting being able to earn 1000-1500% profits with these stickers!
Quite recently CS:GO has experienced an influx of fresh players and new traders, and the prices for some sticker lineups, especially as popular and rare as Katowice 2015, started climbing up and gain more recognition with the trading community. With that in mind, we decided to provide some historical background to this topic and also talk about how stickers affect skin prices on the market.
Why are Katowice 2015 so valuable?
Firstly, the tournament itself was a huge milestone for the community. It was really memorable due to all the old-school popular player lineups, judge for yourself – NiP had f0rest, GeT_RiGhT, Xizt, friberg (Fifflaren at that point had been replaced by allu) – 4 out of 5 players of the “undefeatable” NiP lineup from an earlier era, the ultra-popular Polish Virtus Pro squad that fell off the top tier soon after this major, and of course Na’Vi with Zeus and Guardian – some of the well-respected players.
A lot of the stickers of that tournament are valuable, because they belong to teams that no longer exist, or have been reshuffled beyond the point of recognition. However, stickers of currently active teams are also prized, for they grant their team’s fans the ability to stand apart in the crowd of glory hunters and demonstrate their long-standing loyalty to their favourite team.
The second, and probably more important, reason for the price growth of Katowice 2015 is the fundamental one, of supply and demand. In 2015 the perspectives of the game itself and its market were viewed from a different, less ambitious angle. Many players believed that the game’s success would not last, and the prices would stagnate at a lower point.
Let’s take a look at an old thread on Reddit –
That post referred to ESL Katowice sticker capsules. Now let’s fast-forward to the future…
SurpRISE
In hindsight, the user was completely wrong – in 2016 the price broke the mark of $10-20 that he mentioned, and in Aug 2019, those who were still holding the capsules, must have been surprised seeing them priced at a whooping $300.
The number of traders and players grew at all times since Katowice 2015 (demand side), while the number of stickers (supply side) remained the same and even diminished as stickers got slowly but surely applied to gun skins, and that pretty much explains the whole trend.
Price movement
Let us check in more detail how the stickers’ prices historically fluctuated. There are tons of items out there on the market that either hold Katowice 2015 stickers, or have them applied, on top of all the stickers themselves, and you can check them out of the Steam Market
However, for the sake of simplicity let’s take the basic Na’Vi, VP and Fnatic stickers as an example.
As we can notice, the pattern is the same for all 3 stickers – at the beginning of 2016 and in May 2016, there were two small price spikes of speculative nature and then a lengthy plateau. It was followed by a very sharp spike in August 2019, right after the Berlin 2019 major (probably not a coincidence) when all the stickers from the set got to their ATH prices. Finally, at the first quarter of 2020, we can see that the influx of new traders is helping these stickers gain traction once again, discovering their true value. A lot of traders see them as a valuable investment that can be bought at local price “dip” points.
Fnatic
Current Price – $5.63
Year-to-Date Growth -120%
All-Time High – $11.15
Na’Vi
Current Price – $14.2
Year-to-Date Growth -105%
All-Time High – $23.53
VP
Current Price – $5.82
Year-to-Date Growth -76%
All-Time High – $15.40
The stickers we’re looking at grew over the year by 76 – 120%, even though they’re not quite on the way to seeing their all-time high again. Foil and Holo versions of the stickers completely mimic this movement, just with slightly different numbers.
How do stickers affect skin value?
This is a question that people bring up a lot. First and foremost, remember – stickers go only one way, they can’t be separated from a skin once applied, they can only be scratched off, destroyed permanently. They do not affect a skin’s value negatively of course.
While some platforms automatically suggest higher listing prices for guns with stickers, at the end of the day it’s the valuation in the eyes of the buyer that really matters. There is no precise formula to answer this question, and stickers retain anywhere between 10 and 90% of their standalone value.
Looking at some examples on Steam Market and CSMoney trading platforms, we were able to derive the following factors that seem to have a considerable influence (apart from the sticker quality of course):
1. Positioning and number of stickers
Every kind of gun has a different amount of slots for stickers, some of them are simply not good to show off a good sticker, as they only demonstrate it when inspecting the gun. Obviously, having a sticker in a good place will help it retain more of its value.
When it comes to the number of stickers, we noticed that 4 similar or same stickers look better and are valued higher than a random mix of mismatched stickers.
2. Price, condition and rarity of skin itself
The newer (more liquid) and the more expensive a skin is, the higher the chance someone will decide to slap an expensive sticker on it. An expensive sticker applied to a skin is basically missed profit, so the seller is more likely to price it in when selling the skin. On the other hand, big spenders who buy $200 skins or more expensive ones, are not likely to care about overpaying for a sticker, even for an expensive one.
On the other hand – cheap guns, that can be found in abundance on the market, are less likely to help even a decent sticker retain most of its price when appllied.
3. Colour matching and contrast, personal preference
Stickers retain a bigger portion of their original value on those skins that they go well with, simple as that. For instance, if they harmonize with an already present colour pattern, they go well with the skin. First thing that comes to mind – blueish stickers go well with AK-47 Blue Laminate e.t.c.
On the other hand – skins that lack in detail and have basically one colour, look well with contrasting stickers, as in the example below:
Some skins, especially expensive and good-looking, simply look better without any stickers on them, although at the end of the day it’s a matter of personal preference.
