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This is the first iteration of a new Newbie Guide to Investing in CSGO, covering most basic issues. Some subjects are in the work and will be added at a later date.
Before we start,
THIS is a fantastic overview of CSGO Market History (until April 2019) and a must-have, including timeframes for regular and operation drops, many important events and lots of useful info, made by
steamfrag Which items can be invested in?
Introductionary Note: Discontinued consumables (cases, stickers and basically all containers) are better items for long term investment than non-consumables, since consumables get deleted from the market when used, thus reducing their quantity over time, unlike skins which are only deleted if a user gets banned or if the skins are used in trade-up contracts. Specific skins/knives/gloves could be profitable to invest and to hold long term, if you know exactly what you are doing. But generally skins are better suited for frequent trading and not long term investing, or if you want skins to play with and more or less hold their value with some potential to go up in price. As an example,
Here is a video from TDM HeyJesus from last year explaining what I mean. If you are more interested in trading with others, nice knives and gloves, etc. and not mid/long term investing, visit
/GlobalOffensiveTrade
- Discontinued Cases: You could buy 3 cent cases (or less, depending on your currency from steam market, or 1 to 2 cents from cashout sites) when they get discontinued from the active drop pool and are moved to rare drops. This usually happens when a new case is released, the oldest case from active drop pool moves to rare drops. Active drop pool usually consists of 5 cases. Be aware that cases with high volume on market will take a very long time to rise in price. You could also invest in cases at a later time, for instance after few years of being 3 cents, lower quantities on market and upwards price trend, you could jump in or even at an earlier stage when they are still as active drop but anticipated to be the next case to move to rare drops, if you're in it for the very long haul, and if you can get the cases for extremely cheap prices in bulk (1 cent or less). Some cases are much older and/or rarer than others and therefore cost more, for example Operation Bravo case. Sometimes unexpected things happen with cases, for instance Valve decided to make the Hydra Case a rare drop as soon as Operation Hydra ended, even though most people were expecting the Hydra Case to become a common drop after end of the operation and to become 3 cents for a long time. Instead, they went up in price very quickly and very high. So if you invested in hydra cases during the end of operation for 10 cents, you could have made a lot of money by now. But note that the more cases are released, the more options case openers have to chose from. Therefore the rise in price of cases might slow down during time and take longer, as more and more cases are released. This can only be countered by increasing number of players and case openers (natural demand). Last but not least, the popularity and prices of the skins in the cases will influence the price development of discontinued cases (and vice versa).
- UPDATE: Lately Valve has done some weird things like dropping a large number of older cases such as Shadow cases, Chroma 2 cases, etc. for non prime accounts. So the old system isn't that reliable anymore
List of all CSGO Cases in Chronological Order:
| Case Name | Release Date | Rare or Active Drop |
| CSGO Weapon Case | 14. August 2013 | Confirmed Rare |
| eSports 2013 Case | 14. August 2013 | Confirmed Rare |
| Operation Bravo Case | 19. September 2013 | Confirmed Rare |
| CSGO Weapon Case 2 | 08. November 2013 | Confirmed Rare |
| eSports 2013 Winter Case | 18. December 2013 | Confirmed Rare |
| Winter Offensive Weapon Case | 18. December 2013 | Confirmed Rare |
| CSGO Weapon Case 3 | 12. February 2014 | Confirmed Rare |
| Operation Phoenix Weapon Case | 20. February 2014 | Confirmed Rare |
| Huntsman Weapon Case | 01. May 2014 | Confirmed Rare |
| Operation Breakout Weapon Case | 01. July 2014 | Confirmed Rare |
| eSports 2014 Summer Case | 10. July 2014 | Confirmed Rare |
| Operation Vanguard Weapon Case | 11. November 2014 | Confirmed Rare |
| Chroma Case | 08. January 2015 | Confirmed Rare |
| Chroma 2 Case | 15. April 2015 | Confirmed Rare |
| Falchion Case | 26. May 2015 | Confirmed Rare |
| Shadow Case | 17. September 2015 | Confirmed Rare |
| Revolver Case | 08. December 2015 | Confirmed Rare |
| Operation Wildfire Case | 17. February 2016 | Confirmed Rare |
| Chroma 3 Case | 20. April 2016 | Confirmed Rare |
| Gamma Case | 15. June 2016 | Confirmed Rare |
| Gamma 2 Case | 18. August 2016 | Confirmed Rare |
| Glove Case | 28. November 2016 | Confirmed Rare |
| Spectrum Case | 15. March 2017 | Confirmed Rare |
| Operation Hydra Case | 23. May 2017 | Confirmed Rare |
| Spectrum 2 Case | 14. September 2017 | Active |
| Clutch Case | 15. February 2018 | Active |
| Horizon Case | 02. August 2018 | Possibly Rare (needs more data) |
| Danger Zone Case | 06. December 2018 | Active |
| Prisma Case | 13. March 2019 | Active |
| CS20 Case | 18. October 2019 | Active |
| Shattered Web Case | 19. November 2019 | Active |
- CSGO Major Stickers and Sticker Capsules: Usually at the end of each Tournament, Valve offers a sticker sale (between 50% and 75% off normal price) in-game store. You could buy stickers and capsules during that sale and either sell shortly after the sale ends, for a small quick profit (not guarantied but happened almost every time till now), or wait longer (usually over a year) for a possibly much larger profit. For instance if you bought Atlanta Legend Capsules 2 years ago, you would have 20x your money as of today! As more tournaments are being held and more stickers are released, it is difficult for most stickers to distinguish themselves among the huge mass of other stickers. Only invest and hold on to stickers that you think are promising. The profit from stickers depends on how nice they look, how popular they are, how well the teams perform in the future and how many people invested in them (basically a combination of all these factors). Sometimes teams disband, players quit or become successful, teams/players get banned, etc. which sometimes drive up the price of the related stickers.
- Operation Pass: Sold by Valve in-game in order to get access to an operation. After the operation, all it does is give you access to a coin which you can display (which some players like to collect). You can buy passes during operation (or possibly during a sale of the pass at the end of the operation) then hold on to them and sell at a later date. There were few exceptional circumstances such as Vanguard pass which sold well as it didn't reach as low a discount as people were expecting and wasn't on sale for a long time, so not many were bought. Furthermore, Valve stopped selling the Vanguard Pass before the operation ended, which caused players who wanted to complete the missions to buy it from the market. Similar things happened to the Wildfire Pass. The Wildfire pass didn't even go on sale which caused its price to tripple in a single day when it got removed, then rose in price even more during time.
- Viewer Pass: Introduced with the Katowice 2019 Major, a Viewer Pass was a purchasable in-game item which gave purchasers exclusive access to an upgradeable Event Coin, Souvenir Packages, The Major Pick'Em Challenge and Unlimited team graffiti for the duration of the Major. Similar to Operation Pass, all it does now is to give you a collectible coin. The Katowice 2019 Viewer Pass went on sale for 50% for few days during the last days of the major (before the sticker sale!). Some people bought them at 50% off but some people were expecting it to become even cheaper during the sticker sale (75% off), which didn't happen, instead it got removed, thus causing those investors to panic buy. I expect that Valve will use the Viewer Pass System in the next majors too (speculative opinion), as it was probably a big financial success and a lot of passes were sold in addition to a lot of major stickers.
- Souvenir Packages: Drops in matches during majors. Research the different packages and their skins. Cobblestone is the most desirable due to the very desired and expensive Souvenir Dragon Lore. Also Cobblestone was removed from the map pool and replaced by Dust 2 in April 2018 and was not available in London 2018 and Katowice 2019 majors, thus increasing its price even more. Recently Vertigo replaced Cobblestone in March 2019. During the tournaments, the supply of souvenir packages will obviously be the highest, but also the interest in them is the highest. Try to buy them as cheap as possible and simply wait. Generating profit with souvenir packages might be a very slow process depending on the souvenir packages you have and the volume which was dropped in the majors. Note: as of Katowice 2019 major, only Viewer Pass owners were eligable to receive Souvenir Packages and Souvenir Packages no longer dropped during matches, but Pass owners could chose a match of their choice and get the Souvenir Package for it. This caused an equilibrium in prices, since most people chose the popular new 2018 Nuke and Inferno packages and the Overpass Package, causing their quantities to be much higher than other less popular packages in the major.
- Sticker Capsules 1 and 2 and Community Sticker Capsule: These capsules were common drop for a long time, opened with sticker capsule keys and pretty much worthless (just like cheap cases), then they got discontinued and rose to high prices reaching a peak in May 2016. Probably with a June 2016 patch, they became rare drops which increased their quantity and crashed their prices (combined with the inevitable crash after the crown foil hype). However, after an initial crash they slowly rose in price again and sticker capsule 2 is at its all time high right now (as of May 2019). I assume its also just a hype correlated to the now second Crown Foil sticker hype which could crash back again. At these price levels, invest very cautiously. Also look at specific stickers in these capsules, such as Flammable foil, headhunter, crown foil, etc. At the right prices, these might be interesting items.
- Gift Packages: Around christmas time Valve sold gift packages for $1. If you open a gift package on a server, it awards a random player a random regular skin drop. In the past players who opened the most packages were displayed on a leader-board in the beginning of every game of every Valve NA CSGO server. This has been exploited for advertising. In 2013, people didn't anticipate that the Gift Packages are limited to the Winter months and in the following year, CSGO exploded in popularity. This multiplied the price of these packages until they were sold again in 2014. In 2014, many people expected the same thing to happen, so the supply of Gift Packages increased. CSGO exploded again, but this time the price of gift packages increased much more because gambling sites started to boom and they competed for advertising. Fast forwards, Valve eventually removed the leaderboard feature a long time ago. For a long time gift packages were even below the in-game price. Recently though (since around end of 2018) the supply seams to dry up slowly and the price is climbing again (this time probably due to natural demand from people who actually just want to gift). We can see a similar trend with pallet of presents (which gives up to nine people in the user's match a random item). There is also the Audience Participation Parcel which drops up to 25 gifts randomly to viewers, but this item hasn't done anything interesting price wise yet.
- Skins from Cases: Unlikely to be more profitable than consumables and it is more risky, unless you really know what you're doing. Sometimes Valve changes the design or details of a skin, which could also affect the prices. Also nerfs and buffs for a specific weapon tend to change the prices of skins for that gun (depending on how severe the buff/nerf is), for instance the AUG skins experienced a rise in price after Valve lowered the price (in game!) to $3.150 in Oct. 2018 and pro players used the AUG in the major. Skins which are used as trade up fodder tend to go up in price, whenever a new case or collection is released. There are a lot of other factors which determine the price development of skins which can't be all covered here
- Skins from Collections Exclusive to Operations: skins which only drop during operations tend to rise when the operations end. However, the more operations they have been through, the higher the total supply on market and thus the longer it usually takes for them to go up in price during the breaks between operations. The following collections were dropped during the last 3 Operations (Bloodhound, Wildfire and Hydra). Operation Hydra was the last operation we had and it did end on November 13, 2017, which is more than a year ago! Note that these skins only dropped for those who owned the operation pass for the operation. Those who didn't own the pass, got their drops from the regular active collections.
- The Cache Collection
- The Chop Shop Collection
- The Cobblestone Collection
- The Gods and Monsters Collection
- The Overpass Collection
- The Rising Sun Collection
- The Danger Zone Collection: the Danger Zone Collection was basically just one skin, the MP5 Lab Rats. Players could get the skin by reaching Prime Status after CSGO went F2P in December 2018. The skin was available for a few weeks. A lot of the CSGO playerbase got the skin, which makes it a questionable investment since there are probably a LOT out there and the gun/skin isn't that popular. Could be a long term investment nonetheless, if you start to see quantities lowering over time and some stable price action.
- Skins from Inactive or Retired Collections: The following collections are either inactive for now or completely retired. But some of them could be reintroduced in the future.
- The Assault Collection
- The Aztec Collection
- The Baggage Collection
- The Dust Collection
- The Inferno Collection (The Old One)
- The Militia Collection
- The Mirage Collection
- The Nuke Collection (The Old One)
- The Office Collection
- The Vertigo Collection
- Skins from Active Collections: The following collections are current active collections which drop skins in-game. Usually It is not recommanded to invest in any active collections (though some old skins which are suitable as fodder for certain trade-ups see occasional spikes whenever new cases and collections are released). Also the new Nuke and Inferno Collections are popular and people use skins from them to trade-up to better skins of these collections.
- The 2018 Inferno Collection
- The 2018 Nuke Collection
- The Bank Collection
- The Dust 2 Collection
- The Italy Collection
- The Lake Collection
- The Safehouse Collection
- The Train Collection
- Knives: If you know what you're doing and are familiar with patterns, etc. you can make some profit. But as mentioned knives are better suited for frequent trading and simply as play skins, even though some knives like the Butterfly Knife experienced significant price rise in the past, it is usually not a good idea to use knives as investment items. For instance the same amount of money you paid for a knife 3 years ago spent in specific stickers, would have generated much more profit in the same timeframe.
- Graffitis: Since Valve offered free graffiti for the duration of the major (since Katowice 2019 major and now in Berlin 2019 major), but none for sale, it is an option to invest in all previous major graffitis. The quantities for some old team graffitis could go down significantly and thus increase the price (which it has already done).
- CSGO Keys: CSGO keys have a fixed price in game of $2.50 and are used as currency amoung traders, and of course to open cases. Investing in keys is pointless, unless you want to park your money, or trade or cashout, or unless you can buy keys at a cheaper rate than one normally could (currency issues). There is a special situation going on with the Hydra key which crashed significantly in price after the Operation Hydra Case became a rare drop and became an expensive case. There are different opinions as how the Hydra Key price will develop in the future. Some say it will crash even more, some say it will more or less stablize at the current price levels (1 Euro), others even invest in it right now and say the price will go up again, as soon as the old supply is dried out. For this guide, I remain neutral and leave it up to you to make up your own mind about this specific key. Note: currently this key is not accepted by most traders. There are other keys tied to expensive cases such as Winter Offensive keys which are also not accepted by many traders, though they are low in supply and thus still hold a stable price on market.
- IMPORTANT KEY UPDATE: Valve made newly bought keys in shop non marketable and non tradable as of Nov. 2019. Older existing keys are not affected and can still be traded and listed on steam market. Read more here https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2019/10/26113/
- M4A4 Howl (removed due to copyright violation) - The only Contraband item in CSGO
- Dual Berettas Retribution (removed due to artist ban)
- P90 Desert Warfare (removed due to artist ban)
- CZ75-Auto Poison Dart (removed due to artist ban)
- MAC-10 Curse (removed due to artist ban)
- USP-S Orion (removed due to artist ban)
Note: Some skins were banned from a case, but can be traded up to with trade-up contracts
- Sticker Howling Dawn (removed due to copyright violation)
- Sticker King on the Field (removed due to artist ban)
- Sticker Winged Defuser (removed due to artist ban)
- Sticker Harp of War (Holo) (removed due to artist ban)
- Removed and Reintroduced Stickers: there were a lot of other old stickers which were offered in the in-game shop of Valve and which were discontinued in the past and went up in price really high, but were reintroduced in 2016 to the in-game shop and remained there till today as random coupon offers, which caused their price crash back to around 1 Euro for normal stickers (more for the holos/foils). These sticker were the community series stickers (1,2,3,4 and 5) and the Halloween 2014 series. It is an option to buy these stickers in-game whenever you get a coupon offer and hope that some day they will be removed again, but this is a gamble. Also since these were available for a fixed price for so long in the shop, some investors might have had the same idea and stocked up on them. And the quantities might be too high for significant gains in the future. Also most of them aren't that popular anymore.
- Current in-game Coupon Offers: each player has a coupon offer section with 4 slots with some items (sticker capsules, music kits, pin capsules, single stickers) offered. You could buy these items in-game and hold with the idea that at some point some of these items might get removed, but this is a gamble and impossible to predict and pretty much dead money until something happens. Note that whenever you buy an item from this section, the slot which you bought the item gets automatically refilled with another offer. This was not always the case. In the past after you bought all your 4 offers, you had to wait for new offers. But Valve always comes up with new ideas to make bank.
- StatTrak™ Swap Tool: these tools are sold as a 2-pack in-game for a fixed price. People bought this, used one and sold the other one on the market. For the longest time these tools were around 10 cents on steam market which is quite a big difference to what they logically should be (half the price you pay in game). Recently they have gone up in price and reached that level. So right now, its pointless to do anything with them. If they ever go back down to those previous lows, you might want to consider them if you can get them very cheap. But keep in mind that there is max. cap of what they can rise up to obviously, and that there are better investment options out there
Other ways to profit on the market than long/mid term investing
- Flipping Items in Coupon Section from in-game Store: You could buy stickers, sticker capsules, pins capsules and music kits when you get a coupon offer in-game. Check the price on steam market and if the price you pay in-game + steam tax is still lower than the lowest steam market price, then simply buy in-game and instantly sell on steam market for few cents quick profit. Mostly there is no or just a few cents to be made, but sometimes some offers give you better instant profit. Note: with the introduction of the EZ4ENCE music kits, Valve added a "new releases" category, which enabled users to buy as many of these music kits as they wanted as long as these were sold in this category. This means that potential investors could have stocked up on these items.
- Trade-up Contracts: Determine if a certain skin can be traded up to profitably (consider Steam tax). If so, buy the lower level skins (either through buy orders at steam market, external cashout sites, or trading sites), and sell the traded-up skin on the market until it becomes unprofitable. This is already being done by bots and many other users. Note that the float value of the traded-up-to weapon is a function of the average float value of the traded-up-from skins. For more information and good trade-up contracts, visit the youtube channel of TDM Heyzeus. But remember that whenever a video is posted, a lot of people copy and paste the trade-ups shown in the videos making them unprofitable instantly, so it might be wise to revisit older trade-ups or come up with your own trade-up ideas. Use the trade-up calculator of csgo exchange to double check. Remember to switch the formula to calculate odds to new theory "based on outcome" (the old theory was incorrect).
- Wide Daily Seasonality: Some items peak every day at around noon and tank after midnight (EST). If the difference tends to offset the Steam tax (15%), it can be taken advantage of. Usually, this requires a large volume to be reasonably profitable. If you engage in this technique, keep in mind that there is a scalability limit for the profitability.
- Expansion and Contraction: After a popular game/operation/case/tournament/Steam-sale/market-bug is introduced, players try to dump their items on the market to buy whatever is hot. At the same time, buyers tend to also go for what's hot. Old investment supplies increase, and demand lessens. It is usually wise to do the opposite of the general market behavior and buy on these market crashes. When you want to sell something, it's usually best to wait until the market has fully recovered. Further, during some crashes, it might be better to wait until the end to buy-in as many investors try to buy in early.
- Tournament Sticker Capsule Opening Arbitrage: During a period of time of some Major sticker sales, it was profitable to buy capsules from the market, open them, and then resell the stickers on the market (in the average case). Examine the EV carefully.
- Wide Bid/Ask Spreads: take advantage if the daily bid/ask spread is larger than the Valve tax. Buy commodities that are being demanded at a much lower price than they are being listed at, then sell them back. Don't do this en masse before an expected downturn.
- Grinding Weekly Drops: When a new case is released it can be worthwhile to accumulate in-game time in order to get the new highly-priced case.
- Hunting for sub-variations of items: Some items on various markets have specific sub-patterns/properties that are more valuable than the usual ones (ex., 5-7 Case Hardened blue pattern and other desired knive patterns, specific signature Souvenir Packages, skins with expensive stickers, etc.) and they are sometimes undervalued (especially during market downturns).
- Currency Arbitrage: If a particular conversion is highly skewed and Valve's adjustment is slow, it can become profitable for users in a certain country to buy items in the store or Community Market and resell them off the community market to another country. Note that using VPN to fake your place of residency is against Valve TOS and bannable
- Listing High, Hoping for a Market Bug: List items for a higher price than their market value and hope that a Steam bug will occur where sellers temporarily won't be able to create new listings, while buyers can still buy the items, or hope that someone decides to buy heavily in one of your items and buys a lot at once
FAQ
How many items can I hold in my inventory? Officially, 1000. You can list excess items on the steam market (for high unrealistic prices) and basically use the steam market as extra space. Note that the price of your listed items on market + your steam wallet cannot exceed $2000 at any given time. You can increase the number of items in your inventory and the amount of steam wallet money through some tricks. It is however recommanded that instead you simply make extra accounts and prepare them for usage as extra space and as storage accounts, if you need more space.
How much is the Tax/Fee on Steam Community Market? Approx. 13%-15% total for most.
Here is one in Euro by
donbernie and
Here is one for items under $1 by
HwanZike Yes, if you want to make Gaben really happy, sell for 3 cents and give him 2
What are some real-money marketplaces for CSGO items? Use all external sites at your own risk
I've personally used skinbaron and skinbay and had no problems so far. There are others out there like cs deals. Update (Oct 2019): I used Bitskins before they changed ownership in Oct. 2019. I am waiting to see who the new owners are (still unknown) and how the site develops, before using them again.
Also note that the most popular one,
OPSkins was BANNED by Valve in 2018. Do not use OPSkins if you want to cash out from or cash in to Steam anymore. Their so called VGO Skins aren't actual CSGO skins, even though they look similar. Update (Oct. 2019): OPSkins apparently made a comeback with a P2P system without using Bots. Proceed with caution, because Valve basically sent them a cease and desist letter in the past letting them know that they aren't allowed to be associated with CSGO and use any intellectual property of Valve on their websites at all anymore.
What is the most efficient way to cash out? Sell the items directly at Bitskins, Skinbaron or another trustworthy site. Depending on the items, this can take a while. As an alternative you can exchange your investments into liquid items (popular skins for frequently used weapons, certain knives, case keys, sticker keys, nametags etc. - spend some time to determine which item gives you the best rate) and sell those liquid items on external cashout sites. The latter method will increase the speed at which you get money but will lose you a larger percentage. Keep in mind that BitSkins/Skinbaron take a percentage (5% to 15%), Paypal takes a percentage (~2%), and that the item values on external sites (real money value) are always lower than in the Steam Community Market. Also, every transaction on the Steam Community Market takes away 15% already. Occasionally the items on external sites are so cheap compared to SCM that it becomes worth it to sell them on SCM instead, buy keys from the in-game store, and then sell those keys on external sites again. When selling on SCM it almost always is correct to sell with an order that's higher than the highest buy order and higher than the lowest sell order if the lowest sell order is lower than recent trends display.
What is the most efficient way to buy in? Buy items (not necessarily CSGO only) from trustworthy external cashout sites or from highly reputable sellers with high cash rep if they offer a better deal (you can find some on
/GlobalOffensiveTrade) and sell the items on the Steam Community Market. Spend some time to determine which item gives you the best discount compared to Steam Market Price. Be aware that some items such as souvenir skins, certain Stattrak knives, etc. might have a very high discount, but are very very hard to resell back on steam market, avoid these items and stick to popular items. There is a reason why they have such a high discount. Also be aware that some items might be manipulated on steam market, thus showing a very high discount on 3rd party sites when compared, avoid these items and check their market history to be sure.
http://csgo.steamanalyst.com/hotdeals is one of the tools that can help you with good deals, or the deals section at BitSkins. The general rule is also the cheaper the items, the higher the possible discount. For instance you could buy very cheap stickers for sometimes 50% off, and resell on steam market. But the downside is that it takes a lot of time and effort than a single expensive item, but gives you more steam wallet money at the end. Make sure that after steam tax, you always get more money than if you deposit the money directly to Steam, otherwise this whole process becomes completely pointless.
What are the case opening odds?
| Normal | StatTrak |
| Knives and Gloves | 0.26% | 0.026% |
| Covert | 0.64% | 0.064% |
| Classified | 3.20% | 0.32% |
| Restricted | 15.98% | 1.598% |
| Mil-Spec | 79.92% | 7.992% |
Why did item X increase/decrease in price? Possible reasons: CS:GO updates/balance changes/game changes/market changes (e.g., Tradeup Contract), new cases/operations (both short-term, due to opening frenzies, and long-term, due to increased supplies of skins), a famous streameyoutuber hypes an item, someone tries to manipulate the market, a AAA game is released, a tournament is taking place (CS:GO, DOta 2 etc.), a Steam-sale like Summer sale is going on, a market-bug is ongoing, the ingame drop rate was increased/decreased, legal issues about things related to the CSGO market (e.g., betting/gambling), etc.
If I create a new Steam account, how do I transfer items to that account? How long does this take? Create a new account, log in (via the thick client), set up your profile, enable Steam Guard, wait 15 days, and transfer the items to the account from your main (double check that it is your account). If you intend to use the thin client (e.g., via Chrome), make sure that you log in from there as well because Steam will impose a 7 day trade restriction on your account when you attempt to create a new transaction from a new device (a device meaning a new browser). Also, if you do not have mobile authentication enabled on the alt account, there will be a 3 day delay for trades. You can use the same phone number & email address for many Steam accounts. Also, Gmail forwards emails addressed to your account even if dots (.) are added in between the username characters of your email address.
If I create a new Steam account, how do I use the Community Market? How long does this take? Same steps as above, but you need to purchase a game that costs at least $5 or deposit $5 into your Steam wallet (and wait a month) before being able to use the Community Market. Keep in mind that using a new payment method will trigger a weeklong community market cooldown on your account.
After buying a CSGO item from the Steam Community Market, how long do I have to wait until I can sell/trade it? They are sellable immediately on the Market. You need to wait 7 days until you can trade them to another account. Note that items from some other games, have the 7 days cool down both for trading AND steam market (like Rust).
How do buy orders work? When you place a buy order, the market first looks for all the cheapest items that can fulfill your order. Then the oldest listing (i.e. the seller who has waited the longest) is selected and purchased. If the items are listed in multiple currencies, the amounts are first converted into your currency before being selected (i.e. a 0.03 RUB listing has no priority over a 0.03 USD listing). If multiple buy orders satisfy a new market listing, the oldest matching buy order will be selected. It used to be different in the past, but was changed in 2017.
How do I create multiple listings at once on Steam Market? You could use one the addons listed in the "useful sites and tools" section of this guide down below. The current most secure way (since no external extensions are used) is a solution suggested by
u/soldture . Simply copy this link:
https://steamcommunity.com/market/multisell?appid=730&contextid=2&items[]=Falchion%20Case Change
Falchion%20Case to your desired item name. This solution only works with commodity items. This also works with other games (you have to change the appid and replace it with the appid of that game, for instance Rust is 440.
Item X hyped and is going to moon. Should I Buy? Usually parabolic moves are followed by a crash (not always but most of the time). It is almost never a good idea to buy when something is mooning because of a video, some news, manipulation, mass hysteria and hype or whatever else. Buy the rumour, sell the news.
Item X is crashing hard. The Market is crashing. I am shaking and panicking. Should I Sell? Stay calm, take a deep breath and find out what is really going on and what you really think about it. As an example: there was a huge panic when gambling sites were being banned. Many people panicked and sold their items for ridiculously low prices. People were telling eachother that the skin market will crash and never recover if there is no gambling and the world is going to end. And here we are in 2019, and almost everything (including skins) is at its all time high. However, sometimes you just need to sell fast. Let's say you have a skin from a collection which was inactive for a long time, making the prices of the skins go very high, and then suddenly the collection became active again for whatever reason. Or Gaben officially tells us that he is going to do something crazy with the market which will inevitably crash everything. In that case yes, sell fast (just an example)
Useful sites and tools
Use all external sites, tools and addons at your own risk, some are risky to use, some old and not updated
Chrome addons: - Steam Inventory Helper - mass listing, WARNING READ THIS before deciding to use or not
- Steam Wizard - mass listing (some other functions don't work anymore or are outdated)
- CSGOFloat Market Checker - float value, paint seed, and screenshots of CS:GO items
- Better Buy Orders - see all the buy orders of an item in the Steam Community Market
- Steam Enhancer
Useful Youtube Channels
Credits Helicobacter: FAQ 2.0 (huge shoutout, copied a lot of stuff from this FAQ, sometimes word by word)
Steamfrag: Very useful graphs and market data
Disclaimer: The information offered here is not financial advice. We, the mod team, are just a bunch of gamers and hobby investors. Do your own due dilligence before investing any real money in to a game and do it at your own risk! Use all external links, sites, tools, addons, etc. at your own risk! Any information in this thread may be outdated at any given time. You should be mentally prepared to lose everything invested in virtual items. Valve could change the rules affecting the market anytime. Third party cashout and trading sites and their BOTS could be banned anytime. External events such as successful lawsuits against Valve, new state laws, new country laws, etc. could also affect the market anytime by forcing Valve to take measures (for instance case opening is now restricted in Belgium and Netherlands, OPSkins got banned, Gambling sites were banned, etc.). Also note that all of your items legally belong to Valve, even if you paid for them.
Suggestions and potential corrections to this guide are always welcomed and will be added if necessary and approved by the mod team. I will try to keep this guide updated.
Last updated: Nov. 2019 submitted by This is going to be a long read, and English is not my tongue language so excuse me in case there are some grammar mistakes.
I will try to explain from my experience which methods I have used during the last two years to make money in this business. Some of them worked pretty well, some of them not that good, but still I want to share with you guys some tips specially for those who just began on Betting.
To make this clear: The strategy I used and I am still using to make money on betting is the Bonus Hunting strategy I am explaining below. The rest of this post are tips and other methods which I have tryied but *not with that good results, and of course, with risk*
BETTING TIPS There are PLENTY of amazing posts / comments about this here, but it's always good the have a reminder. From my experience this are some of them:
- Fix STAKES and learn how to manage your bankroll before start betting. You don't need to have 10 different stakes, 2 or 3 are fine if you know how to manage them. Professional tipsters they sometimes use a flat stake and sometimes 2-3 different ones. Of course you can't put the same amount of money @10 than you put at @2.
- From my experience, the best odd-range is 1,8-2,2. That's mostly the range professional tipsters are using.
- Be carefull with multiple bets, it's okay to bet on 10 matches a small ammount of money to see if you get lucky, we all do that. But if you are betting bigger ammounts I wouldn't recommend more than 2-3 different bets.
- If you LOSE, you LOSE. You don't double the next bet to take back, you don't do stupid moves. You wait until the next opportunity.
- Whitdraw part of your benefits when they come.
- Get used to ASIAN LINES, specially those 0,25 / 0,75 since it's an amazing way to control the risk.
- Do your research before betting. You don't bet on a team to win just because they won the last three matches. Check the sidebar, check more statistics, check who is injury, check the line-ups if there are doubts about if some player will finally play. And really important, CHECK THE ODDS EVOLUTION, If Team 1 has won the last matches, playing good, appartently no injuries... and the odd has raised a lot the last hour ask yourself WHY. Before smiling because you may make more profit, think twice and do your research again because seems like someone knows something that you don't about this match. Specially if the odd has raised from @2 to @2.2 in 1 minute, because that means that someone has put a huge ammount of money there, and probably he knows more than you. Be aware of that specially on small markets (Non-important leagues). You can see the odd moves in oddsportal (check sidebar).
- Use a Betting house that don't limit you. I have been limited a lot of times, sometimes just after one bet, so please do yourself a favour. Pinnacle is an excelent option.
- There are not magic strategies to make money on betting.
- 115-120% ROI it's an amazing monthly mark to professional tipsters, be realistic about your profit forecast.
- Sign up in many betting houses. Check the odds and select the best one. Long-run makes huge difference.
1. BONUS HUNTING - Strategy without risk, once you master it.
That's way so far the best betting method I have ever used. It takes time to Master but it's really simply an everybody can do it. I am sure you all have heard of that. Just in case you didn't do it yet, here's a basic guide:
Eg) Bet365 offers €100 to new Users if you deposit €100. (They also give a €50 phone-bonus with small requeriments). Of course you can not withdraw the money inmediatly. You have to move the money X times before that.
The requeriments for Bet365 in Spain are x4. So Bonus money + Deposit money x4. That makes 800 EUR. And the minimum odd is 1,5 and you CAN'T bet on Asian Lines.
What do I do now? Well, you just have to sign up in different betting houses and move the money. Or in other words, bet against yourself.
You will need a Surebet software for that, you can easily find one on the Internet. In my case I use
this one because it's pretty simple.
All the betting softwares work more or less the same way, they show:
-Profit: Bet between -1,5% +2,5%. AVOID betting at 45% surebets because that's a mistake from the bookies, they will change your odd after betting if you get lucky to place your bet before they notice of their mistake.
-Bookmarker: Here it will show up between which bookmarkers you have to place your bet.
For example, you have now €200 in Bet365, and you just sign up on Pinnacle. Then you have to deposit money on Pinnacle and place the bet in both websites. Let's say Arsenal-Chelsea. Over 2,5 goals in Bet365 is @2 and Under 2,5 goals in Pinnacle is @2,03. No matter what happens that you will make 0,83% profit and you will have moved €200 of those €800 you have to move. Or even better than that, let's say the Final Score of the match is 1-1, so U2,5 goals. In that case you would have won your bet on Pinnacle, which means that you would have made aprox. €200 profit on Pinnacle and you would have lost €100 in Bet365 (Remember that from those €200 just €100 are yours, the rest is the bonus part). You have won €200 on Pinn, you have lost €100 on Bet. So totally you have made €100 in just one bet. That's the best case, hunting the bonus in just one move. If the final score would have been 2-2, then you would have made your 0,83% profit and keep betting between Bet365 and other bookies until you would have moved the €800.
-Event: That's where you are going to bet.
YOU NEVER BET ON SPORTS OR MARKETS BEFORE DOING RESEARCH.
Eg) Liverpool-Aston Villla Over 3,5 cards @2 Under 3.5 cards @2 Seems like a good way to move your money. But you have to know that a red card in some BH is considered as 1 card and in some others is considered as 2 yellow cards. Let's say there was 2 yellow cards and 1 red card: That would make 3 cards in one BH and 4 in another one. Imagine O3,5 was were the red cards count as one and U3,5 where red cards count as two. You would have lost all your money. How do I know which ammount I have to bet on every case? Let's say you have found a nice 2,7% profit bet between two betting houses and you have a bonus in one of them. You will get the bonus and also the profit, that's a good one. This betting house offers a €100 bonus if you deposit the same amount. So now you would bet €200 in one side and X amount on the other side.
Let's say ManUtd vs Hull City: MU Asian Handicap -0,5 @1,97 - Betting House 1 (You have the bonus here) Hull City X2 @2,06 - Betting House 2 You would bet €200 @1,97 at BH 1 and €191,26 at BH2. Here's the link from one calculator I'm using (all work the same way). THINGS YOU MUST KNOW: - If you are hunting one bonus between two betting houses and you don't know which amount of money they will allow you to bet, you check the max. bet on the one that shows you the bet limits, and once you know that bet in the other BH first. or you could have troubles. If the Event is really big then you don't have to, but on small markets you must.
- Avoid Too-high profit surebets, Move your money between -1,5% and 3,4,5,7%.. maximum. You don't bet €200 at profit 56% because that's a bookie mistake and that's a really small market which will probably all you to bet no more than €25. If you get in there, the bookie most probably will send you a message saying that your odds has been changed. You will pay their mistake.
- You don't bet €200 anywhere, be carefull. If the bonus have high rolleover requirements such as move €1600 EUR, you don't move €400 in one bet. That's suspicious. Keep it simple, move €200 maximum and in normal events like Premier League Matches, La Liga, Serie A, FA Cup, UCL, EL, NBA, Main Basketball Leagues... that's ok. Remember to check always the limits before betting.
- Do RESEARCH BEFORE STARTING. Make a new Excel document, and write down all the betting houses you are going to hunt bonus from. Check their conditions, you are not interested on making €50 if you have to move €2000. That's a waste of your time. Also check all the payment methods, I recommend NetelleSkrill or PayPal, easier and faster. Write down all the documents you are going to need for the withdrawal. Check reviews from the betting houses, try to avoid the new ones, let them settle down first.
You can only hunt the bonus ONCE per person which means that If you want to continue doing this method you will have to find more people who wants to do it. That's what I have done, friends of mine gave me the documents I needed + PayPal/NetelleSkrill verified account and I do it for them. Of course I pay them around €100-€150. Which is not bad money for them considering they have to do nothing almost. Is it hard to find people? Well, I have 6 on the line right now, everybody wants money for free specially if they are students.
How much money do I need for getting started? I would say around €500. So you can sign up for a €100 Bonus depositing €200 in another house and you still have some extra-money just in case you win all your bets on the 'Bonus Betting House' and you haven't moved enough money to make the withdrawal yet. Once you start making money you can do this method for more than one person at the same time.
How much money can I make? Depends on the betting houses available in your country and the number of persons you are doing at once. UK is the best one so far (more BH, more offers) Spain is pretty good also. You have to do your own research for your country.
2. ARBITRAGE BETTING That's what you use for hunting the bonus - moving money between two betting houses without risk because you have placed bets on all the possible options -. You can do it independently. If your country has acces to betting houses where you don't get limit you can move money between them at high profit ranges.
Eg) Valencia-Sevilla. BBTS YES @2,3 - Betting House 1 BBTS NO @1,97 - Betting House 2 There is a 6,85% profit on this Bet. Which is amazing. Now you could place a €2000 bet. For example betting €1032,72 on option 1 and €1205,69 in option two you would make €136,82 no matter what happens. What is the problem with this method? - You need to bet big to win big.
- You would get limited in most of the betting houses after that.
- This only works on big markets, you can't put this amounts in a Sweden 3rd Division match.
- If they cancel the match in one side but not in the other one and your bet wins in the side that has canceled your match... Well.. (Have to say this has never happened to me and it's really weird to happen on big matches).
3. TRADING I have done Betting Trading for a while, you can do it WHILE the match is being played or before that. What is the method about? It's about trying to figure out what the odds of one match are going to do before they do. Obviously you need to have strong information about the match you want to bet on.
*Eg) Based on this week. Dortmund-Real Madrid. Dortmund to win opening odd was @2,78 (15th September). The odd right before the match for the same bet was @2,23. WHY? Well, because something has happened between these time. Real Madrid couldn't win Las Palmas the 24th + some injuries + Cristian Ronaldo haven't done his best. And Dortmund won Wolfsburf 1-5 and Freiburg 3-1 in 3 days.
Now let's see somehow you could have seen that Real Madrid would have trouble in Las Palmas stadium and Dortmund would continue winning on Bundesliga.
Let's say you placed a €1000 bet on Dortmund to win @2,78 (day when the bookies offered the match). Then you waited and right before the match was started you bet €1588 on Real Madrid +0,5 @1,75.
You would have made €191,43 and the match would't have even started.*
Check it yourself
here Of course this a risky-long term example, but you can do it before and after the lines-ups. If you think some player won't play because you have strong information about that, place your bet, wait for the odd to raise up and close the bet on the other side aftertwards.
Does anyone really make money this way? Yes. Let's say you know a professional tipster with a lot of subscribers. When this guy shows the next bet a lot of people who have payed for that service will bet there, and usually big amounts of money. If you somehow know where the influential-tipster is going to bet before he posts it to his subscriptors you have your business done. Open bet, wait for the odd to go down, close bet other side.
What does people who doesn't have access to this kind of information (mostly everybody)?. They do big research, check a lot of pages, be documented as posible. If you find something really good some or later the odd will drop. But it's hard to find.
Where to do trading? Pinnacle doesn't limit, that's why most of people uses that BH. Also betfair is an excelent option for this kind of methods.
Good luck with your betting!
submitted by Q: What should I invest in?
A: tl:dr:
Perhaps some discontinued containers/stickers.
This thread lists a lot of interesting plots and on
this thread you can check out which items were available on which timeframes.
Case investing: Buy cases & sticker capsules when they are at 3c/4c. They can't get any cheaper and once they stop dropping they
might rise in price (Be aware of the volume on the market - cases with close to a million currently on the market will take a long time to rise in price.) Popularity of the skins in the cases has an influence. i.e. Vanguard cases are still cheap and will rise in price slowly as the skins aren't as desirable, despite the supply stopping. Huntsman cases are much more desirable and quickly rose in price once they stopped dropping. Sticker Capsules
were great investments as once a sticker was used on a skin, it was gone from the market for good. Gun Skins from cases only leave the market if a user is banned or the skin is used during the Trade-Up Contract. Supply for stickers should always drop (note: as of the 2016-06-15 patch, they are most likely rare drops). Some cases are more rare and therefore cost more, for example operation Bravo cases. If you know what you're doing, it is sometimes profitable to buy cases at prices higher than 3-4c.
Sticker Investing: You could buy stickers when you get a sticker offer then sell on market. Check the prices and be aware of the market tax. You might net a few extra cents pretty quickly but you're really not getting much profit here. Buy up on stickers when the capsules have stopped dropping / they are no longer offered as
common deals - My guess is the capsules themselves would be better investments and I don't think there's really any way to know if a sticker is no longer offered as deals other than their recent trending. Stickers, are very similar to passes, they are most commonly a long term investment. Team stickers have always gone on sale at the end of valve sponsored tournaments.
Tournament Sticker Investing: Buy stickers at a low price (during the sale towards the end of a tournament is best) and sit on them. You can either sell shortly after the tournament for a quick profit, or wait 6 months+ for a possibly larger profit. As more tournaments are being held and more stickers are released, it is difficult for most stickers to distinguish themselves among the huge mass of other stickers. Only hold on to stickers that you think will appreciate. If you're lucky a team will be banned or split or become successful in the future which is likely to drive up the price of their stickers (see ibuypower). The amount of profit from these stickers depends on how nice they look and how popular they are (if they are too popular, they can be a liability because of overabundance). Katowice stickers look great, Dreamhack not so much, 2014 cologne even less so.
This comment and
this comment might clarify some Tournament Sticker questions.
Skin Investing: Trickier than the other two and more risk involved. I wouldn't really recommend as it's unlikely to be more profitable unless you really know what you're doing. If a skin goes contraband, for whatever reason, the price will shoot up. Buy early when this happens and you should see profit if you wait. Don't expect it to really happen again. Valve will likely not let any copyright infringing skins through after the Howl. Skins from a case that has stopped dropping or from a collection from an operation that has stopped will rise. How much so will depend on their desirability. This will be a slow process. (example: M4A1-S Guardian). Valve, with the Vanguard Operation, reintroduced some rare skins into the game, such as skins from the Cobblestone collection, Overpass collection, Cache collection and Dust collection which drastically reduced the value of the majority of skins involved. Gun Skins from cases only leave the market if a user is banned or the skin is used during the Trade-Up Contract.
Knife Investing: More or less don't. Knives are fickle things to trend. Maybe you find a knife with a nice pattern going cheap due to an oblivious seller. But it won't be easy to get rid of. As with the skins knives from cases that are no longer dropping should rise in price, knives from current cases (i.e. Falchion) will drop in price until the case stops dropping.
Operation Pass Investing: These are the things that you redeem in order to get access to an operation. After the operation, all it does is give you access to the coin (which some players like to collect). All passes so far have gone on sale at the end of their operation. You can buy passes then sell after the operation has finished. If you want to do this, buy during the sale and wait 4-6 months. You should see profit, but I personally wouldn't bother. Vanguard sold well as it didn't reach as low a discount as people were expecting and wasn't on sale long, so not many were bought. Furthermore, Valve stopped selling the Vanguard Pass before the operation ended, which caused players who wanted to complete the missions to buy it from the market.
Souvenir Case Investing: Research the different cases and their skins. Cases like the Cobblestone case is the most desirable due to the Dragon Lore. During the tournament the supply will be at it's height so buy early and wait. Profit will continue to climb but might be a slow process depending on the case you have and the volume that were dropped.
Gift Package Investing: In the Winter months Valve sells gift packages for $1. If you open a Gift Package on a server, it will award a random player a random regular skin drop. In any given 2 hour period, those five players that open the most Gift Packages are displayed on a leader-board in the beginning of every game of every Valve NA CSGO server. This has been exploited for advertising. In 2013, people didn't anticipate that the Gift Packages are limited to the Winter months and in the following year, CSGO exploded in popularity. This multiplied the price of CSGO Gift Packages until they were sold again in 2014. In 2014, many people expected the same thing to happen, so the supply of Gift Packages increased. CSGO exploded again, but this time the price of gift packages increased much more because gambling sites started to boom and they competed for advertising. It is possible that in 2015, many people and gambling sites will buy many more gift packages than previously, and that the relative growth of CSGO will decrease. Valve announced that they will pull the advertising feature of the gift packages during early 2016.
Tournament pin investing: Coming soon
CSGO game key investing: Coming soon
Q: What items have been (in some cases, virtually) discontinued?
A: Here's what you can only get from the marketplace/trading and absolutely nowhere else:
GUNS M4A4 Howl (removed due to copyright violation) Dual Berettas Retribution (removed due to artist ban) P90 Desert Warfare (removed due to artist ban) CZ75-Auto Poison Dart (removed due to artist ban) StatTrak MAC-10 Curse (removed due to artist ban
and cannot be traded up to) StatTrak USP-S Orion (removed due to artist ban
and cannot be traded up to) The Consumer Grade skins of the Assault, Alpha, and Office collections cannot be traded up to and these collections did not return after their initial drop phase.
STICKERS Note all of these are probably now rare offers in the in-game store:
Sticker Howling Dawn (removed due to copyright violation) Sticker King on the Field (removed due to artist ban) Sticker Winged Defuser (removed due to artist ban) Sticker Harp of War (Holo) (removed due to artist ban) Sticker Windy Walking Club (probably no longer for sale) Sticker War Penguin (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Terrorized (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Stay Frosty (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Fight like a Girl (probably no longer for sale) Sticker CT in Banana (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Chicken Strike (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Bossy Burger (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Blitzkrieg (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Witch (probably no longer for sale) Sticker T on Cat (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Stay Frosty (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Till Death Do Us Part (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Terrorized (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Pigeon Master (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Blitzkrieg (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Windy Walking Club (probably no longer for sale) Sticker War Penguin (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Shooting Star Return (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Nelu the Bear (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Flashbang (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Fight like a Girl (probably no longer for sale) Sticker CT in Banana (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Chicken Strike (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Cat Call (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Bossy Burger (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Trick Or Threat (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Zombie Lover (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Witch (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Trick Or Treat (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Bomb Squad (Foil) (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Work For Ammo (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Warowl (probably no longer for sale) Sticker T-Rekt (probably no longer for sale) Sticker SAS Chicken (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Piece Of Cake (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Pandamonium (probably no longer for sale) Sticker My Little Friend (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Massive Pear (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Ho Ho Ho (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Blood Boiler (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Headless Chicken (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Hostage Rescue (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Wanna Fight (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Witchcraft (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Robo (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Lucky Cat (Foil) (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Baaa-ckstabber! (probably no longer for sale) Sticker CS On The Mind (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Doru The Fox (probably no longer for sale)
Sticker Queen Of Pain (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Eco Rush (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Just Trolling (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Flickshot (probably no longer for sale) Sticker One Shot One Kill (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Chi Bomb (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Dinked (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Awp Country (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Ninja Defuse (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Delicious Tears (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Knife Club (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Doomed (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Don't Worry, I'm Pro (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Pros Don't Fake (? probably no longer for sale) Sticker Firestarter (Holo) (probably no longer for sale) Sticker Phoenix (Foil) (? probably no longer for sale)
CONTAINERS 2013/2014/2015/2016 Souvenir Cases (ceased dropping) Sticker Capsule 1 and 2 (ceased dropping, (note: as of the 2016-06-15 patch, they are most likely rare drops)) Community Sticker Capsule 1 (ceased dropping (note: as of the 2016-06-15 patch, they are most likely rare drops)) 2014/2015/2016 Tournament Sticker Capsules (no longer for sale) Gift Package, Pallet, and Parcel (only available during Christmas)
OTHER All Operation Passes (no longer for sale) Music Kit Midnight Riders (no longer for sale, probably only available during Christmas) Weapon Case 1 (confirmed rare drop) Weapon Case 2 (confirmed rare drop) Weapon Case 3 (confirmed rare drop) eSports 2013 Case (confirmed rare drop) eSports 2013 Winter Case (confirmed rare drop) eSports 2014 Summer Case Operation Bravo Case (confirmed rare drop) Winter Offensive Case (confirmed rare drop) Vanguard Case (confirmed rare drop) Huntsman Case (confirmed rare drop) Chroma Case (confirmed rare drop) Phoenix Case Breakout Case Revolver Case Falchion Case Shadow Case Wildfire Case Chroma 2 Case Chroma 3 Case Operation Hydra Case (probably a mistake by Valve)
u/steamfrag has
posted the drop timeframes for these., created a timeline visualization
here, and overlayed price history visualizations
here.
The following collections are discontinued when no operation is going on: Cache, Overpass, Cobblestone, Chop Shop, Rising Sun, Gods and Monsters. Consumer tier skins in those collections cannot be traded up to.
The following collections don't drop right now but could reappear in a future operation: Baggage, Mirage, Nuke, Militia, Inferno, Vertigo, Aztec, Dust, and, potentially, Assault, Office, and Alpha.
Q: What currently drops ingame and what are the case opening probabilities?
A: All mainstream cases outside of the cases listed in the "other" section above drop.
u/qsulphurous: The currently dropping weapon collections during non operation times are: Dust 2, Train, Bank, Italy, Safehouse, Lake. Mirage used to be in the drop Pool but was replaced by Bank when the Huntsman case was released.
Here are the case opening probabilities Q: What are some ways I can make a profit on the market, other than investing (long-term)?
A: Note that a lot of these are automated already with bots (which can hurt your profitability) and that some are more scalable than others (e.g., through multiple accounts).
Weekly Operation fluctuations (
hotshowerscene) - With the new "1 drop per week" for the operation we're seeing big fluctuations in some skins on the market . As the drop resets everyone levels up then most sell their skins more or less immediately. This massive influx drives the prices down. As the supply of skins slows throughout the week the price climbs back up, usually peaking just before the drop resets. If you play this right you can make a bit of profit by buying and selling on the market at the correct times for the correct prices. This can be a gamble as there's not really much certainty on the price. My advice here: research the skins and their trends. Skins that can be used in tradeups to highly desirable skins are the best, but it's hard to judge what will happen and what the price peak will be. If you do this, make sure you're happy with any profit and don't get too greedy. (example: Skins that tradeup to M4A1-S Icarus Fell) Random fluctuations - Keep an eye on mid price skins that there isn't a huge volume of (see Deagle Blaze) and if you manage to pick one up at a low price and sell at a peak price then you can net a few bucks profit. Do your research and hope you get lucky.
Wide daily seasonality: Some items peak every day at around noon and tank after midnight (EST). If the difference tends to offset the Steam tax (15%), it can be taken advantage of. Usually, this requires a large volume to be reasonably profitable. If you engage in this technique, keep in mind that there is a scalability limit for the profitability.
Expansion and contraction: After a popular game/operation/case/tournament/Steam-sale/market-bug is introduced, players try to dump their items on the market to buy whatever is hot. At the same time, buyers tend to also go for what's hot. Old investment supplies increase, and demand lessens. It is usually wise to do the opposite of the general market behavior and buy on these market crashes. When you want to sell something, it's usually best to wait until the market has fully recovered. Further, during some crashes, it might be better to wait until the end to buy-in as many investors try to buy in early.
Trade up items by starting from undervalued items - Start with an inexpensive item (snipe undervalued items from Opskins or CSGOlongue) and make a lot of profitable trades. This usually requires a lot of work. Also, most questions in this arena are better suited for
globaloffensivetrade (and if you're trading game gifts
/gametrade).
Trade up contract arbitrage - Determine if a certain weapon can be traded up to profitably (consider Steam tax). If so, buy the lower level skins, and sell the traded-up to skin on the market until it becomes unprofitable. This is probably already being done by bots. Note that the float value of the traded-up-to weapon is a function of the average float value of the traded-up-from skins.
Tournament sticker capsule opening arbitrage: During a period of time of the Cologne 2015 sale, it was actually profitable to buy capsules from the market, open them, and then resell them on the market (in the average case).
Smart/educated betting - Bet on teams where the betting odds are inefficient. Most questions in this arena are better suited for
csgobetting.
Wide bid/ask spreads - Take advantage if the daily bid/ask spread is larger than the Valve tax. Buy commodities that are being demanded at a much lower price than they are being listed at, then sell them back. Don't do this en masse before an expected downturn.
Snipe undervalued items from the markets - In the Steam Community Market, this doesn't work well for the more expensive/rare items as the bots close to the Valve data-center (working serially and randomly) are likely to be faster. For OPSkins you can sort the items according to price and find undervalued items. Some sites compare the prices across sites, which allows arbitrage. There's also an extension that shows how discounted different items on OPskins are.
Nonethewiserer: For CSGOlongue you can create quick buy order (on auto-bump) and offer fewer keys than an item is worth, and the order can go through on market crashes (quicksell listings).
Salvaging the junk yard of gambling sites (
barnyard303): Cases can be acquired from CSGOskins for 1 cent as they are trying to liquidate them quickly. Decent skins are overvalued on gambling sites and can be used to cash in.
Watch a tournament and hope for souvenir drops: During tournaments, link up your twitch account to your Steam account and keep the twitch stream running in order to potentially get a Souvenir case.
Grinding operation missions or weekly drops: It is often the case that paying for the operation pass early is profitable if you get the mission drops and sell them on the market. When a new case is released it can be worthwhile to accumulate in-game time in order to get the new highly-priced case.
Sticker flipping: Sometimes it is profitable to buy stickers from the store and then flip them for a profit (after the 15% Steam tax) on the community market.
Hunting for sub-variations of items: Some items on various markets have specific sub-patterns/properties that are more valuable than the usual ones (ex., 5-7 Case Hardened blue pattern, Black Pearl pattern of Doppler knives, KennyS Cobblestone Packages, skins with the Howl sticker) and they are sometimes undervalued (especially during market downturns).
Item gambling: If done kosher, a -EV proposition because of the rake. Over many trials, a guaranteed loss due to the law of large numbers. That being said, some people have developed shady schemes where it can become profitable (e.g., via
market manipulation). However, these schemes are
risky.
Currency arbitrage: If a particular conversion is highly skewed and Valve's adjustment is slow, it can become profitable for a certain country to buy items in the store or Community Market and resell them off the community market to another country. You can use a VPN and Paypal to pretend you live in another country, although it's pretty risky.
Sell high and hope for a market bug/manipulation: List items for a higher price than their market value and hope that a Steam bug will occur where sellers temporarily won't be able to create new listings, while buyers can still buy the items (or hope that someone engages in market manipulation of your item).
Create high buy orders to items priced out of SCM: Some items (e.g., Kato 14 Holos and Dragon Lores) have a market value greater than can be listed in the SCM. Some uninformed owners will still list these items on sale on the SCM (way below market value) every few months, and their sell order gets matched with the highest buy order. Therefore, a profitable strategy is to create the highest buy orders on these items. Check this FAQ for how you can create these buy orders. Note that you actually need to have the money in your Steam wallet, and that it needs to stay there for a while (you can make buy orders for 10x the amount in your wallet). Having a large Steam wallet is already associated with hidden costs (inflation, illiquidity, Valve's fickle nature etc.); determine for yourself whether you deem these costs worth it. You also need a way to check if your buy order is the highest every now and then.
Q: What are some good sites and tools for market information, outside this subreddit?
A: http://www.steamanalyst.com/ - Moving averages
http://steamcompanion.com/ - Historical supply numbers
http://csgostash.com/ - All items categorized and visualized
https://steamcommunity.com/market/ - The official Steam Community Market
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/counterstrike/Main_Page - Historical info like operation dates
http://195.154.110.156/charts/items/ - Aggregate level stats per item
http://csgobackpack.net/- Value of inventories
http://steam.tools/itemvalue/ - Value of inventories
http://csgo.exchange/ - Value of inventories, item prices, quantities of items
http://www.goaggro.com/ - Price info
http://steamcharts.com/app/730 - CSGO Player Base Stats
http://beta.csgro.com/ - Track items
http://www.hltv.org/ - CSGO news
https://www.csgozone.net/ - Quantities of items
http://blog.counter-strike.net/ - Official CSGO blog csgro.com - Market statistics, trade tools, inventory tracking (not yet available)
Software: Steam Market Watchlist - Track investments
http://counterstrike.wikia.com/wiki/Container#Weapon_Cases - Retired collections
Steam Inventory Calculator - Track investments over multiple accounts (takes work to setup)
Software: Steam inventory Helper - Automated selling of a lot of items in bulk
Software: Better Buy Orders - See all the buy orders of an item in the Steam Community Market
Steaminvestor (and Excel Formulas, see comments) - Track investments
Automatic Account Creation - use software at own risk [Steam Desktop Authenticator for mass confirm listings - use software at own risk](
www.google.com)
Q: How many items can I hold in my inventory?
Officially, 1000. You can list excess on the market, but after around 200 items listed, the Steam Community Market homepage wont load any longer; the specific item pages, will load, however. I'm not sure after how many items those pages will fail to load.
levitating_cucumber and
el_vper: You can also reach over 6000 items in your inventory by listing items on the market, buying more items, then cancelling the listed items (
4000 2000 is the maximum safe amount). Note that your listing volume+Steam Wallet cannot exceed $500 at any given time.
Konstaduck: If you have 999 items in your inventory, you can also accept a trade with at most 1000 items for a total space of 1999.
u/MikeR0tch: Apparently, the trade trick doesn't work any longer,
unless you follow some specific rules.
Q: How much does Steam charge in tax/fees when I sell an item on the Steam Community Market?
This thread show the exact formula, while
this thread shows the values for cent values in the range $0.01 to $1.
Q: What is the most efficient way to buy in?
A: Buy items (not necessarily CSGO only) from trustworthy sellers (e.g., Opskins) that you can sell on the Steam Community Market. Spend some time to determine which item gives you the best rate (
http://csgo.steamanalyst.com/hotdeals is one of the tools that can help you with that, there's also an extension out there that displays the discount% on each item loaded). Alternatively, Steam gift cards are sometime on sale. If someone is selling the investments you want off market at discounted rates, that could be an even more attractive option. When you buy from the SCM, it is almost always correct (unless you are dealing with something timing-sensitive) to place a buy order that's lower than the cheapest sell order.
Q: What are some real-money marketplaces for CSGO items?
A: Use at your own risk (
use this one at your own risk)
Q: What is the most efficient way to cash out?
A: Sell the items directly on Opskins/Bitskins (or a trustworthy competitor with small fees). Depending on the investment items, this can take a while. As an alternative you can exchange your investments into liquid items (popular skins for frequently used weapons, certain knives, case keys, sticker keys, nametags etc. - spend some time to determine which item gives you the best rate) and sell those liquid items on OPskins. The latter method will increase the speed at which you get money but will lose you a larger percentage. Keep in mind that OPskins takes a percentage (5% or 10% depending on your membership - there are coupon codes btw), Paypal takes a percentage (~2%), and that the values on OPskins are lower than in the Steam Community Market. Also, every transaction on the Steam Community Market takes away 15% already. Occasionally the items on OPskins are so cheap compared to SCM that it becomes worth it to sell them on SCM instead, buy keys from the in-game store, and then sell those keys on OPskins. When selling on SCM it almost always is correct to sell with an order that's higher than the highest buy order and higher than the lowest sell order if the lowest sell order is lower than recent trends display.
Q: Why did item X increase/decrease in price?
A: Possible reasons: CS:GO updates/balance changes/game changes/market changes (e.g., Tradeup Contract), new cases/operations (both short-term, due to opening frenzies, and long-term, due to increased supplies of skins), a famous streamer hypes an item, someone tries to manipulate the market, a AAA game is released (short-term loss and long-term losses), a tournament is taking place (CS:GO, DOta 2 etc.), a Steam-sale is going on, a market-bug is ongoing, the ingame drop rate was increased/decreased, legal issues about things related to the CSGO market (e.g., betting) etc.
Q: If I create a new Steam account, what do I have to do in order to transfer items to that account? How long does this take?
A: Create a new account, log in (via the thick client), set up your profile, enable Steam Guard, wait 15 days, and transfer the items to the account from your main (double check that it is your account). If you intend to use the thin client (e.g., via Chrome), make sure that you log in from there as well because Steam will impose a 7 day trade restriction on your account when you attempt to create a new transaction from a new device (a device meaning a new browser). Also, if you do not have mobile authentication enabled on the alt account, there will be a 3 day delay for trades. You can use the same phone number & email address for many Steam accounts. Also, Gmail forwards emails addressed to your account even if dots (.) are added in between the username characters of your email address.
Q: If I create a new Steam account, what do I have to do in order to use the Community Market in that account? How long does this take?
A: Same steps as above, but you need to purchase a game that costs at least $5 or deposit $5 into your Steam wallet (and wait a month) before being able to use the Community Market. Keep in mind that using a new payment method will trigger a weeklong community market ban on your account.
Q: After buying an item from the Steam Community Market, how long do I have to wait until I can sell/trade it?
A: They are sellable immediately on the Market. You need to wait a week until you can trade them to another account.
Q: How are buy orders prioritized once someone sells an item with a price in the buy range?
A: See answer here: Price -> currency -> datetime of order. Apparently, there is some controversy over this. There's the hypothesis out there that this ruleset only applies to weapon listings and that sticker listings work as follows: Price (order qualifier) -> some combination of currency and datetime of order (quantifier)
Q: How do I add over $400 to my Steam Wallet?
A: Buy keys and games with your wallet funds and then create refunds on all those purchases. Redeem Steam Wallet codes. Perhaps you have to use the Steam API to create buy orders with these large amounts of Steam money (
u/ursoos). It's needless to be said that this is quite risky.
Q: How do I mass sell items without having to list and confirm them one-by-one?
A: Steam Inventory Helper and Steam Desktop Authenticator (
here's how to avoid a 7 day trade ban while transfering the authenticator).
Q: Approx. what fraction of bought containers are actually opened?
A: For all listings, approx. 35%.
~ Two thirds (with a large variance) for sell order prices higher than current buy order prices, while the
follow-up indicates 60% of high sell orders. For sell listings that are fulfilled immediately: unknown, but probably much lower. If we assume that they are 0, and that the number of either type of fulfilled sale is equal, we get 33%.
This study predicts 20-25% Q: Help! I listed to many items and my Steam market page won't load any longer. How can I access the listed items?
A: Try to give it some time to load. If that doesn't work,
this might work. Additionally, try to load the specific item page of the item that you've listed so many of. If all else fails, perhaps you can access/cancel the items with a
Javascript script. As a last resort, you can wait six (or 12?) months until the listings are automatically cancelled or contact Steam support.
Credits
bluechops:
FAQ 1.0 hotshowerscene:
Item categories 1.0 Steamfrag:
Discontinued items 1.0 Changelog
2016-05-24 Added changelog, referenced a thread with interesting stats in the first section 2016-05-24 How many items can I hold in my inventory? Linked the quick trade trick. 2016-06-15 Added FAQ element on SCM market page not loading. 2016-06-16 Changed references saying that Sticker Capsules do not drop. Added reference to Javascipt source which is potentially able to remove listings in case pages do not load. 2016-06-22 Added
http://195.154.110.156/charts/items/ to websites 2016-06-24 Added more information to How do I add over $400 to my Steam Wallet? 2016-06-28 Added revolver case to rare drops 2016-07-03 Added more info to "Why did item X increase/decrease in price?" 2016-07-04 Minor formatting 2016-07-05 More info added to the question about listing and confirming items to sell on SCM 2016-07-07 Grammar 2016-07-17 Added the Q&A on Steam tax 2016-07-21 Added more clarification to Why did item X increase/decrease in price?, added Falchion to rare drops, added all kinds of references to OPskins-SCM arbitrage opportunities, and an extension that shows discount% on OPskins items 2016-07-22 Added Q&A regarding what currently drops. 2016-08-27 Qualified the tl:dr in the first question, added Shadow Case to rare drops, added tips for SCM buyin/cashouts at the respective questions. 2016-09-06 Added
http://beta.csgro.com/ to links 2016-09-18 Create high buy orders to items priced out of SCM, added more realistic warning at the bottom of thread 2016-10-04 More clarifications to Create high buy orders to items priced out of SCM 2016-10-25 Added indications that retired in-game sticker offers returned as rare offers 2016-10-25 Added Wildfire case as rare drop 2016-12-06 Added more software links 2016-12-10 Case opening probabilities 2017-01-14 Added link to steamfrags item availability chart 2017-03-16 Added Chroma 2 to rare drops 2017-09-23 Added Chroma 3 to rare drops 2017-09-23 Added Operation Hydra Case to discontinued drops
Please notify me of potential corrections and suggestions. Any of the information in this thread may be outdated at any given time; invest at your own risk. You should be psychologically prepared to lose everything invested in CSGO items. Valve is very fickle with regard to rules and regulations that could affect the SCM, the CSGO game, general Steam item management, and anything related.
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