A new record! Two skins were sold for almost $800,000. This is many times more than any previous records. Today, the CS.MONEY blog is going to tell you what these skins are and what other deals were record-breaking before. Here we go.
StatTrak AK-47 Case Hardened & Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore
That’s the most recent record, reported in a tweet by ohnePixel. According to the streamer, it was Chinese collectors who made the most expensive deal in the history of the game. Two skins were the object of the exchange: a StatTrak AK-47 Case Hardened and a Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore. Both are decorated with streaks of four Titan Katowice 2014 (Holo) stickers.
Fun fact: the traders met in real life to conduct the exchange. Maybe it even resembled a scene from a mafia movie, what with tuxedos and suitcases full of cash? The transaction amounted to $770,000 — a record price for both skins.
Note that the previous confirmed record-breaking exchange was also held in China. Namely, the collector gave more than $100,000 for a StatTrak M4A4 Howl. The other expensive skins had approximately the same prices. For example, a Karambit Case Hardened in Factory New condition changed hands for about the same amount.
Why are skins so expensive?
Long story short: rarity. Consider the example of the AK-47 Case Hardened from the record exchange. The skin appeared in the game back in August 2013 and drops from the CS:GO Weapon Case, which is astonishingly expensive. For one “box of randomness,” you’ll have to pay over fifty dollars! That’s like the price of an AK-47 Redline — and that’s only for a chance to get something.
Of all the skins in the case, the AK-47 Case Hardened is the second rarest. As a result, the minimum price for the item amounts to one hundred dollars. Not so much by the standards of AK-47 skins. And remember that the price for a regular AK-47 Case Hardened depends on the float. The higher the float, the lower the price. At the same time, the total number of Factory New, Minimal Wear, and Field-Tested exemplars is less than that of Battle-Scarred items.
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Next, the Frag counter comes into play. When unpacking the case, there’s a 10% chance of getting a StatTrak skin. Notably, the price doesn’t go up tenfold, as you might think. Usually, StatTrak versions of the skin are about three times more expensive than their regular counterparts.
AK-47 Case Hardened has another feature: the appearance of the skin depends on the pattern, the most expensive pattern being 661. Given that there are actually thousands of patterns, the rarity is obvious.
That’s exactly why a StatTrak AK-47 Case Hardened with a low wear value, StatTrak technology, and a pattern #661 can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right now, we know only about four existing copies of StatTrak AK-47 Case Hardened Minimal Wear. That’s how rare this skin is!
Why are skins so expensive now?
You might wonder why new records are being set if the skins appeared in the game seven years ago? It really is the case. Just a few years ago, Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovács bought a Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore for $10,000, and it was considered a crazy deal. Today, however, such trades are commonplace.
There are several reasons for the constant rise in skin prices. The first is the finite and ever-dwindling number of skins. Many items can no longer be obtained out of cases or crafted — simply because certain cases no longer drop.
The second reason is the growing audience and interest in skins. At release, the online peak of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was barely over 20,000 players. Now there are about a million people playing simultaneously at the peak, making the shooter the most popular game on Steam. The high demand for skins, combined with a slowly growing supply, stimulates the growth of prices.
We shouldn’t forget about investments either. Valve isn’t going to stop supporting Counter-Strike: Global Offensive yet. On the contrary, new operations and cases are released in the game, and there’s a rotation of maps. For the past year or two, a greater amount of content has been released in the game than in the first two years after its release. In this environment, buying a skin to sell it more expensively in the future is a perfectly reasonable idea.
Does this mean there’ll be new records?
Yes. Right now, there’s no reason to doubt that we’ll be hearing about new staggeringly expensive exchanges in the near future. Sooner or later, there’ll be a new record in terms of the cost of an exchange. Valve even added fuel to the fire: the two previous operations spawned a whole bunch of rare and extremely expensive skins.
Speaking of prices. Our wiki has a new section: “Investments,” specially designed to track fluctuations in skin prices.
