CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

I just wanted to take some time to list simply the best FREE CS:GO case opening sites, which went down few notches after the recent Valve changes. Nowadays it’s nearly impossible to find a legit site without having to deposit $1-5 and to gamble, but I’ve listed the cheapest sites with best strategies so that you could also profit from them, like I have done. I’ve also listed the total amount I have been able to withdraw!
You also find the complete list at https://skinsmaster.vip/
1. HellCase Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#hellcase
Still simply THE BEST site out there! Thanks to all you great people I have finally reached affiliate level 5 on HellCase, meaning that YOU get free Rainbow case, arguably the best case on the site and the only one I ever personally buy (free $0.70 just by using my link - use that to buy one Rainbow case or two Mil-Spec cases if you just want more skins) just by joining and using the ref code 6230763. Also free daily case if you add hellcase.com to your name or refill with $5. Highly recommended!
2. CSGoFast Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#csgofast
Nowhere near the easy and totally free site it used to be, but the minimum deposit to COMPLETELY unlock withdrawals is just $1, and VGO is accepted for easy, instant access. Same deal with gambling; no more free cases. Luckily their Solo PvE Slot seems to be pretty generous, so I would recommend you to start with $0.1 bet and 5 winlines until to get to like $10 or so, and then switch to full 9 lines and maybe up the bet as well. The best thing about this game are the bonus games which use all 9 winlines regardless, and your original bet, so it’s a fast way to really multiply your money.
3. CSGetto Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#csgetto
Free case from here if you add their URL to your username, and if you have a VK.com account (which you really should with CS:GO sites, because most of them are Russian) you can just like their page and get more points for another free case.
4. Farmskins Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#farmskins
Another totally legit site, although they do require minimum of $4 deposit to enable withdrawals. But as you can just deposit $5, get either AWP or AK-47 skin and then cheaper skins with that and just withdraw them immediately this is not a problem.
Use code REDDIT to get $0.90 for free when registering!
5. PVPro Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#pvpro
Join and use my code to receive 50 free coins. Nowadays you need to play 5 PvP games to unlock the marketplace, since they switched from their own market to a player driven marketplace. But since the games can be played for free and you can win more coins that way, you’ll soon enough can start buying your skins!
6. WTFSkins Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#wtfskins
Register and use code redditskin (click on FREE on the top of the screen) to get $0.40 which you can directly use on the store and withdraw without making a deposit!
You can also link your Twitter to get an extra $0.1!
Remember to claim your free coins daily!
7.CSGOLive Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#csgolive
Same deal as with WTFSkins (same team runs the sites). Register and use the code redditskins and link your Twitter (optional, but recommended) to get $0.16 which you can use to open two Graveyard Cases. No deposit to withdraw.
Remember to claim your free coins daily!
8. ClickLoot Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#clickloot
ClickLoot (before SkinSilo) is a site that tends to go bit up and down, and if you're moving around, even traveling, they can easily lock down your account and while you should be able to get it unlocked via support, but who knows when that no longer is an option. But unless you travel frequently this one is still a decent option that actually lets you withdraw your skins to Steam fast. Also offers cryptocurrency withdrawals for bigger sums.
Register and use the code redditfreeskins.
9. CSGOEmpire Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#csgoempire
Free case just by joining and using the code REDDITCSGO by clicking the Free Case link on the top of the site. Withdrawals to CS:GO (Insteant), CS:GO (Trade-Locked), Dota 2, Rust or H1Z1. Bitcoin and Ethereum withdrawals coming soon. Free daily cases for leveling up, coin flip, roulette and match betting for gambling.
Register and use the code REDDITCSGO.
10. EZRage Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#ezrage
EZRage does not offer case openings, but they have great odds for fast games and coinflips, and they also offer 100 player jackpot games! Joining and using my code grants you extra 5% on each deposit, so remember to use the code to get most out of using this site.
Register and use the code REDDIT to receive 5% more on each deposit.
11. DaddySkins Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#daddyskins
DaddySkins has loads of features ranging from cheap cases ($0.29 Mil-Spec!) to arena competitions and item upgraders. They support Ethereum payments which you can use to get your user level higher to get access to absolutely free daily cases.
12. Gamdom Join via: https://skinsmaster.vip/index.html#gamdom
This site has it all - apart from case openings, that is. But as you can just play easy games like crash to earn coins and then You can withdraw CSGO items directly, but cryptocurrency withdrawals require a deposit to be unlocked.
Register and use the code REDDIT to receive up to 80 000 coins to really get you started!

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login using Steam, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 500 points ($0.50) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

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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.
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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?

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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
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• 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

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List of all CSGO Cases in Chronological Order:
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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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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1. The Cache Collection
2. The Chop Shop Collection
3. The Cobblestone Collection
4. The Gods and Monsters Collection
5. The Overpass Collection
6. The Rising Sun Collection

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• 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.

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• 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.

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1. The Assault Collection
2. The Aztec Collection
3. The Baggage Collection
4. The Dust Collection
5. The Inferno Collection (The Old One)
6. The Militia Collection
7. The Mirage Collection
8. The Nuke Collection (The Old One)
9. The Office Collection
10. The Vertigo Collection

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• 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.

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1. The 2018 Inferno Collection
2. The 2018 Nuke Collection
3. The Bank Collection
4. The Dust 2 Collection
5. The Italy Collection
6. The Lake Collection
7. The Safehouse Collection
8. The Train Collection

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• 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.

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• Gloves: see knives

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• 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).

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• 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/

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• Banned/Removed Skins:

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1. M4A4 Howl (removed due to copyright violation) - The only Contraband item in CSGO
2. Dual Berettas Retribution (removed due to artist ban)
3. P90 Desert Warfare (removed due to artist ban)
4. CZ75-Auto Poison Dart (removed due to artist ban)
5. MAC-10 Curse (removed due to artist ban)
6. 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
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• Banned/Removed Stickers:

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1. Sticker Howling Dawn (removed due to copyright violation)
2. Sticker King on the Field (removed due to artist ban)
3. Sticker Winged Defuser (removed due to artist ban)
4. Sticker Harp of War (Holo) (removed due to artist ban)

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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).

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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).

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• 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

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• 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

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FAQ

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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.
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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
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What are some real-money marketplaces for CSGO items?
Use all external sites at your own risk

• www.bitskins.com (UPDATE: Bitskins seams to have new owners since Oct 2019, though still unknown who they are and how the site will develop from here)
• www.skinbaron.de
• www.skinbay.com
• cs.deals
• lootbear

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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.
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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.
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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.
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What are the case opening odds?
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	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%

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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• https://db.csgofloat.com/ item database with over 100 million skins
• http://www.steamanalyst.com/ - Moving averages
• http://csgostash.com/ - All items categorized and visualized
• http://steam.tools/itemvalue/ - Value of inventories
• http://csgo.exchange/ - Value of inventories, item prices and quantities, database. trade up calculator
• http://steamcharts.com/app/730 - CSGO Player Base Stats
• http://www.hltv.org/ - CSGO news
• http://blog.counter-strike.net/ - Official CSGO blog
• https://www.csgostickersearch.com/ - search market for skins with stickers
• Software: Steam Market Watchlist - Track investments
• Automatic Account Creation - old post, use software at own risk
• Steam Desktop Authenticator - for mass confirming (very risky, defeats the purpose of mobile auth)
• WinAuth - for mass confirming (very risky, defeats the puporse of mobile auth)

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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

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Useful Youtube Channels

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• TDM HeyZeus - CSGO Market and Trade-up Contracts
• eSports Talk - CSGO News
• 3kliksphilip - CSGO Updates, Skins, etc.
• TheWarOwl - CSGO Updates, Maps, etc.

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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
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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.
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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.
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Last updated: Nov. 2019

Most of you probably know what happened between moe and cs go diamonds so i will not explain it. If you dont just google "moe cs go diamonds".
I wonder why there is no reaction of twitch, i mean he used their plattform to advertise this website. Maybe they need some evidence but in my opinion there are more then plenty in the posts both sides made. For example Moe said on twitter he had 26000 diamonds he tried to withdraw, diamonds he won with the knowledge of the future coin flips. He wanted to withdraw money won from users of the site, so there are definitely people who were cheated on. You can find his twitter post here: https://twitter.com/m0E_tv/status/742117097765933056
On another twitter post he admitted that he got "the rolls before they happen."Cs go diamonds did this multiple times even with him saying not to. But as you can see on the skype conversation he had with an admin of cs go diamonds he asked for the future lists. So it was a lie. You can find the twitter post here: https://twitter.com/m0E_tv/status/742435274370613249 And the skype conversation here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ck6fFDCWgAAmkfG.png
Cs go diamonds said it is "provably fair" because you cant manipulate the future rolls. But if you know the future rolls there is no need in manipulating them. Imagine lotto where you know the future numbers, there is no point in changing them.
So im wondering why there are no consequences from twitch's side. These gaming sites are intransparent and most likely all fraud but it is still allowed to advertise them. I realy hope there is a chance to get a response from an official side or from some streamers.
It is also most likely most of the skins deposit on these websites are gone forever. For Example shroud had around 81000 $ on cs go wild but i dont think there are that many skins to withdraw (Im not entirely sure because im not registered on the site) Further he is only 1 of many with such balance. So my assumption is most of the gambling sites sold the skins to pay for sponsorships and their overall costs. As you can see on the skype conversation between moe and cs go diamonds they paid him 7435.9$ and 9537.04$ for his sponsorship. These are 10% of their total earnings. Following this they made 74359$ and 95370$ dollar in the last months and are also able to pay moe a buy out with 75000 (In Bitcoins, the IRS would probably be interested in also) As i see it it is probably a pyramid scheme.
At last maybe for the streamers. You have this huge opportunity to be part of something new and of big changes. You shouldnt forget that you are responsible for you behaviour to your audience. Imagine a superbowl add about investing in the pyramid scheme of Bernard Madoff.
Ps: If you watch the video of moe and his girlfriend winning 54000$ it is kinda obivous he was using these knowledge. He was down on 3900$ and put all on green. His girlfriend randomly comes in to scream with him as soon as he won. It could be a coincidence but the chances for this to happen are very low. I mean how often did you see his girlfriend on stream? This is not an evidence but kinda odd.
Since there are so many post with questions i thought it is necessery to update and try to answer some of the most frequent one. I had no idea what i let lose but im glad so many of you feel the same as i do.
Yes, it was my first post. Im normaly an introvert guy who doesnt post anything on the internet. But what bothered me is that someone could pull something like this off, get paid 95000$ and doesnt have to fear any consequences. Further i tried to refer to most sources i mentioned, so it doesnt matter if it is my first post or not, you can read everything for yourself and make your conclusions.
Im not sure if valve is responsible. Assume the skins are like your car. You can do whatever you like because its your property, so you can also use it to bet..
I think twitch is responsible. TV Broadcasters are also responsible for the ads they broadcast but im actually not sure.
I dont hate moe. He is kinda entertaining, you can compare him to gordon ramsay which a lot people like and watch. They are acting closely the same. But that doenst mean anything. Imagine Kate Middleton, who is for a lot of people probably one of the nicest people on earth, tricks people into a pyramid scheme. Shouldnt she be punished like everyone else should?
Also a lot of people compared the deposit and withdraw system to a bank. A bank is transparent (at least in parts) and regulated from public authoritys. The money you deposit is used for all sorts of credits for consumer and companies. They pay their bills with the interests they make with them. I know a normal bank does a lot more to earn money but thats one of their main incomes.
Many think he didnt benefit from knowing the future numbers. Thats partly right. He doesnt win directly by playing against others. But imagine a roulette game with 1 guy at the table who is partnered with the owner . He can win for the owner against people who doenst know anything about the partnership. On a regular roulette table without the green it is a 50/50 chance to win, it is mathematicaly a fair game because the expectancy value is 0. The players pay for the others, it is in balance, but not if there is one guy who know the future rolls. I think thats the reason why cs go diamonds didnt allow him to withdraw skins.
Sassanian mentioned it is a Ponzi Scheme and i think he is right, thank you.
I know a lot of streamer advertise different betting sites and i didnt mention anyone else beside moe. The point is he made a part public of what is happening behind those sites public and also used informations from the admin. There are no evidences of other streamers doing the same. (Cant believe he made a fraud public he was involved in, he doesnt seem stupid, but that definitely is. Maybe he was greedy or had one of his rage moments)
On cs go diamdonds are also no informations of how they make that much money. I mean on regular roulete there is green on which the bank wins but thats not the case at cs go diamonds as far as i know. I didnt find a deposit fee or anything like it ( Just Imagine there is such a fee at 1%. As i mentioned they made 95370$ (i dont know if moe got 10% or 20% of that so the number may differ) in one month. I refer to the twitter post of cs diamonds which you can find here: https://twitter.com/CSGO_Diamonds/status/742706689913262080 With such a fee there would be 9.537.000 $ of skins deposit in one month. Thats hard to believe) If someone knows more feel free to post any information you can refer to.
You can find an article about it here: http://www.hltv.org/blog/12005-csgodiamonds-fraud-the-reason-why-sites-like-this-should-be-blocked http://www.esportsbettingreport.com/csgo-diamonds-skin-betting-m0e/ http://americanbettingsite.com/2016/csgo-diamonds-scamming/
Statements of both parties are on their twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/csgo_diamonds post from June 14 https://twitter.com/m0E_tv posts from June 13
Thank you guys for the support.
I started a new thread about betting sites and their earnings in general. If you are interested you can find it here: https://redd.it/4ow3fe

Hello,
I have been wanting to touch on this subject for some time now. I finally sat down, read the posting rules and hopefully this post does not get removed since it is something that needs to be discussed. This should be discussed, but if it is too sensitive, at least see this as a Public Service Announcement (PSA) from a concerned member of the community.
The CSGO subreddit is extremely influential. Players may not post a lot on here a lot, but I guarantee you nearly all of them probably check this sub on a daily basis -- especially post-match comments. Thus the segue into the main idea behind this story.
This story as titled above involves TACO specifically, but can be applied throughout a lot of the professional scene. My concern comes from watching TACO in his LG days all the way through to his departure from SK. I remember when I first read TACO's "TwitLonger," I was expecting to see a post regarding him being kicked or traded. Instead, what I saw, was something much darker from my inference: bullying.
TACO's stated in his TwitLonger, "during all this time, every second in the team I felt the outside pressure on me was always HEAVY and maybe this is one of the reasons why I came to this closure." This is unsettling to me as I am one that watches nearly every CS tournament and reads the post-match discussions. Playful banter and memes are one thing, but a vast amount of the things discussed in post-match SK threads usually consisted of blatant, disgusting hate on TACO. I am not going to presume to say that his statement is 100% a reflection of this sub, but I know it is to some extent.
Even though everyone knew TACO played a supportive, sacrificial role on his team, his K/D was still utterly decimated by hate after every match. Even sometimes when he was prosperous in matches, he would still receive hate. This is a school of thought I have yet to conceive. The first example of irony is how one of the main demographics for this community are people that normally are introverted, not very social and by virtue of that, bullied. A lot.
I have only begun to conceptualize this through many, many years of researching and studying psychology. The psychology behind bullying is that most people under normal circumstance will bully those weaker than them. This even dates back to "Cro-Magnon" ideologies behind "Alpha" and "Beta" males. The trend I am noticing, especially in this community is a lot of these kids are bullied in their realities, and because they are not strong enough to stand-up in person, they then turn that insecurity in bullying others. The manifestation of this being represented as cyber bullying.
CSGO community, picture this: you play for the top team in the world, are a 2x major champion, are among the highest earners in CSGO, have literally nothing to prove to anyone and yet, after every match you are utterly destroyed in comments by the very community you love -- sometimes even when your team wins the match. It does not matter what your skill level is to be empathetic or sympathetic. There is ZERO justification to consistently bully the professionals that play CSGO and entertain you. Or any other human being for that matter.
This brings me to my next and last example of irony: SK/MIBR post-TACO. SK had some less than stellar results before TACO left, but I don't think that is a direct reflection of his skill or position in the team. Teams have slumps, people figure you out, it happens. This can be further exemplified by the fact that he left on his own accord. Since his departure, SK/MIBR have been in shambles. Multiple roster moves, converting to an English speaking team, and ultimately a new infancy period since they have to develop a completely new play style from their former.
The irony is that this sub played (in my opinion through constant observation) a major role in TACO's departure, ultimately because the community felt he wasn't good enough to play for SK anymore. But, after seeing the result of TACO's departure, it is clear that he was the glue holding that team together. The backbone they needed to stand up. The people in this community need to learn to help build up people, not tear them down. To be empathetic (if you aren't bullied) and sympathetic (if you are bullied). Constructive criticism can bolster individuals who are receptive to it.
The most disgusting part I find of all this, is the ignorant narcissism. People seem to be obsessed with Karma on Reddit comparable to 'likes' on Facebook or 'hearts' on Instagram. People in this community are abusing professionals in a futile attempt to hoard karma at the expense of someone else's mental state. The expense to which you don't know the extent and an expense that demonstrably knows no bounds.
I hope this actually gets posted and not removed. It should be a sensitive subject for most people that commune here as I am willing to bet a good bit of have been immensely bullied in their lives. I know I have. I found CS at the age of 12... 18 years ago at a time where I loved being on CS because it was an escape from my reality. Memes are great. Banter is lovely. But this community needs to draw a line in a sand and stay on the other side of it. Even if some of these pros are good at shrugging off negativity and not letting it affect them, there is a flip-side to this coin and it is damaging their psyche. Imagine being in a high pressure tournament, trying to be focused in the moment and you have lapses of "what is Reddit going to say after this match?"
You may think it sounds dumb, but I bet it happens far more than you know. Most of these teams now need a team psychologist JUST to deal with the pressure that comes with performing for their fans and representing their Organization. Not to mention the mental wear and tear of constant travel.
In summation, this will probably be received negatively and that is not my intent. I apologize now if you find some of this offensive, but if you find this in a negative light, chances are it is you that needs to look in the mirror and take a deep, hard look at your own insecurities and find a better outlet for them instead of at the expense of others. While I love the memes and banter, I hope this community eventually finds a happy medium between what is playfully harmless and what is downright crass at its lowest level.
Its always easier to tear someone down rather than build them up.
Don't take the easy road.
(TL;DR): Please stop bullying professional players as much on this sub, as it is harmful to the person's mental state. Don't let the irony of being bullied in reality manifest into bullying others that can't defense themselves guide your path.
Edit: thank you for the gold. I'm am glad this was received in a positive light for the most part. Thank you CSGO community for your understanding and the upvotes so this had full visibility.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code CHLOE
It's simple, just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter CHLOE for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.
Let me know if it works for you. Thanks guys.

CSGOPolygon code FRANK50
They upped the coins to 1000 ($1.00) with no withdrawal limit, no deposit requirement. The only problem is you have to check several times a day until the CS: GO bots have skins refilled, but they do refill several times a day. The site is getting hammered.
The admin told me they're going soon going to implement a p2p system so they don't have to manually refill skins anymore.
To use the code just login, and at the top right click your profile picture, and select 'Redeem Code' and then enter FRANK50 for 1000 points ($1.00) which can be bet on Roulette, Coin Flip, Crash, CSGO Matches, or you can withdrawal.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/09/csgo-lotto-owners-settle-ftcs-first-ever-complaint-against

Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Thomas “Syndicate” Cassell, two social media influencers who are widely followed in the online gaming community, have settled Federal Trade Commission charges that they deceptively endorsed the online gambling service CSGO Lotto, while failing to disclose they jointly owned the company.
They also allegedly paid other well-known influencers thousands of dollars to promote the site on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook, without requiring them to disclose the payments in their social media posts.
The Commission order settling the charges requires Martin and Cassell to clearly and conspicuously disclose any material connections with an endorser or between an endorser and any promoted product or service.
“Consumers need to know when social media influencers are being paid or have any other material connection to the brands endorsed in their posts,” said FTC Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen. “This action, the FTC’s first against individual influencers, should send a message that such connections must be clearly disclosed so consumers can make informed purchasing decisions.”
Also today, the FTC announced that staff has both sent warning letters to 21 social media influencers it contacted earlier this year regarding their Instagram posts, and updated staff guidance for social media influencers and endorsers.
According to the FTC, beginning in late 2015, Martin, Cassell, and their company, CSGOLotto, Inc., operated and advertised the csglotto.com website. The CSGO Lotto name was based on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, also known as “CS: GO,” an online multi-player, first-person shooter game. The game uses collectible virtual items called “skins” that can be used to cover weapons in distinctive patterns. Skins can be bought, sold, and traded for real money. CSGO Lotto enabled consumers to gamble, using skins as virtual currency.
Martin is the company’s president and Cassell is its vice president. As alleged in the complaint, each posted YouTube videos of themselves gambling on their website and encouraging others to use the service. Martin’s videos had titles such as, “HOW TO WIN $13,000 IN 5 MINUTES (CS-GO Betting)” and “$24,000 COIN FLIP (HUGE CSGO BETTING!) + Giveaway.”
Cassell posted videos with titles such as “INSANE KNIFE BETS! (CS:GO Betting),” and “ALL OR NOTHING! (CS:GO Betting).” In all, Cassell’s videos promoting the CSGO Lotto website were viewed more than 5.7 million times. Martin and Cassell allegedly also promoted the site on Twitter without adequately disclosing their connection to CSGO Lotto.
According to the FTC’s complaint, Martin, Cassell, and their company also had an “influencer program” and paid other gaming influencers between $2,500 and $55,000 to promote the CSGO Lotto website to their social media circles, while prohibiting them from saying anything negative about the site.
The Commission’s complaint alleges that Martin, Cassell, and their company misrepresented that videos of themselves and other influencers gambling on the CSGO Lotto website and their social media posts about the website reflected the independent opinions of impartial users of the service. The complaint charges that, in truth, Martin and Cassell are owners and officers of the company operating the CSGO Lotto website and the other influencers were paid to promote the website and were prohibited from impugning its reputation.
Finally, the complaint alleges that a number of Martin’s, Cassell’s, and the gaming influencers’ CSGO Lotto videos and social media posts deceptively failed to adequately disclose that Martin and Cassell are owners and officers of the company operating the gambling service, or that the influencers received compensation to promote it.
The proposed order settling the FTC’s charges prohibits Martin, Cassell, and CSGOLotto, Inc. from misrepresenting that any endorser is an independent user or ordinary consumer of a product or service. The order also requires clear and conspicuous disclosures of any unexpected material connections with endorsers.

There's also some more paragraphs about what "influencers" should do, but I'll leave that out as it deals with boring Instagram crap.
So, what do you think about the end result of the h3h3productions assblasting?

In Summer 2013, Valve incorporated cosmetic weapon skins into CSGO.
Even back then, some items were quite expensive; being only accessible through expensive case openings, knives such as karambits were priced as high as 70 dollars.
In late 2013, CSGOLounge came to be, a site which allowed users to bet their cosmetic item skins on competitive CSGO pro matches for a chance of winning other users' skins, but only if they win.
The site started really spiking in popularity around the Katowice 2013 major, during which hundreds of thousands of users participated in item gambling on the pro matches for the event. Communities rose up to discuss gambling events and pro matches, such as /csgobetting which has now reached over 50000 subscribers.
During this whole time, there were no laws against child gambling that were enforced by CSGO Lounge. Pretty much anyone could bet there.
The first major case of drama came along with the IBP vs Netcode Guides match in summer 2014, which was apparently rigged (proven about half a year later though, so all skins lost in that match were permanently lost).
Despite that drama, betting sites like lounge continued to grow in popularity and keep getting bigger and bigger. Sites like CSGO Jackpot came to be, which focused more on pure gambling rather than logical sports betting. CSGO coin toss sites would have users flip a coin and risk their bet for the chance at doubling it. As was later discovered, in many cases these sites were heavily rigged in favor of the site owners.
In 2014 and 2015, even in early 2016, many streamers would stream videos of themselves participating in gambling of skins, either winning lots of money, or losing a large amount. This would not only entice the little kids watching them to gamble their skins on the sites and want to get involved, but also help the gambling sites in gaining popularity.
There were many measures that Valve took to counteract issues caused by gambling, such as account hackeres and scammers, but even when these measures would harm the livelihood of places like lounge, they would personally contact them and help them to ensure that their bots would stay operational.
Throughout the next 2 years from 2014, all of these trends continued. Some sites like trade.ninja and fanobet rose and fell, but overall, gambling continued to rise. And with it, so did the popularity of CSGO. People who were never even interested in CSGO in the first place would buy copies for themselves and friends purely out of desire to get involved in gambling (bear in mind this was just some users though). New skins and cases came out, the game continued to grow.
The end came quickly and abruptly. It was discovered quite recently that many of the popular sites for csgo gambling were rigged (no proof for Lounge, but many other sites) and that the owners of the sites would play on these gambling sites whilst simultaneously rigging the games so that they would gain more attention for their site.
Surprisingly, due to this and surely many other legal issues, Valve took action. They sent a cease and desist letter to over 20 popular CSGO gambling sites, and essentially told them to stop their activities within 10 days or to face legal repercussions. Many sites closed their doors and returned skins to users, but up until today, not CSGO Lounge. Despite not saying anything for 10 days, the might giant has fallen, as today CSGO Lounge announced that users from many major countries INCLUDING THE UNITED STATES are no longer permitted to gamble skins on their site, and most likely may end up limiting the gambling options on their site as a whole in the near future.
And so that is the end of CSGO gambling as we knew it. It was a fun ride guys, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. I will say though that I'm happy it is over. It caused a LOT of issues for this game and the people that got involved with it, so I think this is for the best.
I made a video to help give a visual to all of this stuff, so if you're interested in actually seeing what all this stuff looked like and getting a more in-depth explanation, check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J16ZvU9vIDY
Let me know what you guys think about this and the recent turn of events; did I miss anything? Let me know that as well, thanks!
EDIT: Updated with a fixed date or two at the start, replaced ESL Cologne 2014 with Katowice 2013.

First of all, for all you people saying "oh only morons would go gamble" or "of course when you're gambling you're going to lose", you guys are idiots. People have and always will continue to gamble, for the thrill of winning, even though more often than not their losing. People went to shuffle, jackpot, wild, or whatever site and gamble. Are they gonna win? Maybe, maybe not, but it's their right to gamble. Your thoughts on gambling and it's stupidity are only your opinions and irrelevant to the entire situation.
With that being said, there's a huge difference between going to a Harrahs or a Rio to gamble as oppose to going on a website created by god knows who, totally unregulated, betting virtual items. Yes, people expected a fair game, however anyone who didn't think there was a risk any unsavory stuff was going on was just lying to themselves. Now I'm not condoning any action by anybody, but you people who think there's a lawsuit or that there's jail time involved are ignorant.
Let's take a look at some examples. Back in the day, all those "freeipod" sites. You'd complete offers, refer friends, and get free shit. I'd say 50% of those sites were scams. More recently, the Full Tilt Poker fiasco. All the big names in poker took a big hit cause player funds weren't available for withdrawal. Nobody in these situations went to jail, and there's a hell of a lot more wrong with what they did.
If CSGO Jackpot had a $15k pot, and didn't roll a winner, took all the skins in the bots, and closed shop... would anyone go to jail? No.
If OPSkins went offline right now and took all of the items in their inventory (10's of thousands of items), nobody would go to jail. These are virtual items. When you trade them, you're agreeing that you'll get nothing in return, steam warns you about this and makes you go through hoops to actually make trades.
I'm not condoning anything or anybody. I'm not saying what James may or may not have done is right, wrong, borderline, or anything. The point is, CSGO skins have ZERO monetary value. Just cause there's a market for collectors or average users who are willing to pay real money for them, there's literally no way that a skin can be converted to cash, it can only be traded via Steam or 3rd party websites who will exchange it for cash, but keep in mind these websites (OPSkins) are operating by breaking the Steam TOS.
Yes, we have an expectation that sites are legit, some are, some aren't. It's the risk we take, just like the risk we take when we deposit skins into a jackpot or pick CT or T in a coin flip.
Whether or not James knew the outcome of every game or not, we saw him lose and we saw him win, it's not like it was an unwinnable endeavor for the average user, but for Christ sakes people.... to think he's going to jail or in trouble with the law, that's ridiculous. All the other big names essentially did the same thing. The whole thing with James now is apparently his Twitch suspension and which I think we can all agree on has nothing to do with the gambling and everything to do with the alleged "fake subs".
I don't know. I've rambled on too much, but for the love of god if everyone could stop saying that James broke the law and is in trouble with the law, please stop. And also those saying that people who gambled are stupid, also please stop.
Take the above novel with a grain of salt cause I don't know anything about anything.

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.

There is nothing I can say to you, expect share my experience. I'm 18 years old, I've been skin gambling on CS for 3 years now. In those 3 years, my life has become utterly terrible and give me emotions of suicide and depression even at the age of 15. I remember I first started out using my birthday and Christmas money. I lost it all, I was depressed for over a month until my parents gave me my allowance. As soon as I received it, I put it into gambling, I felt ecstatic, I was winning, I was up over $1,000. I go to sleep feeling on top of the world that night. I wake up, first thing in my mind if more gambling. I start betting, I'm up again! Hours later I lose it all. I end that night crying in my bed for hours(Please don't think of me as a bitch, this meant and literally still means the world to me.) I wake up, I stay in my room all day, waiting for the weekend to be over so I can go to school and try to get my mind off of it. I can't stop thinking and feel regret. Age 16, birthday and Christmas come again. I decide to buy a PS4! I get back into CSGO after my terrible trauma with the micro transactions. I sell my PS4, my mother yells at me, I bet all the money I had, I'm up, I'm down, almost lose it all, up again. End the night with profit, I'm happy. I'm telling my self that I'll cash out, it won't end up like last time. It happens, I lost it all, my mind is at a blank the only emotions I felt at the time was regret and "why" in life. What more do I have? I was very anti-social at the time. My grades plummet, I have to go to summer school. Worst experience and most boring thing ever. I try to play CSGO but it just kept reminding me of gambling, I uninstall. I get into rocket leauge, I decide to buy skins for that game, I know I can't gamble them away since it's impossible to gamble on there. I watch some CS gambling videos since they were in my recommended, I feel the urge. I sell the rocket league skins and bet on CS-GO BIG. I lose it all in 3 coin flips I fucking lost it. I felt anger and depression for probably a week straight until I decided to just binge watch television shows on Netflix. I'm 18, senior in highschool, part time job. I save money for college, probably about $7500 at this point over the course of I think 8 months. I've still been playing csgo and I have a couple of skins. That feeling comes AGAIN and AGAIN I can't fucking stop it. I put over $2,000 of into skins and its gone, I fucked up again. This all happened last week. I don't know what to do, it keeps coming back. I fucking hate what I've become with this addiction I shut my family out and put negative emotions on them subconsciously. All I can say is please, don't do the dumb shit I've done. It's destroyed my mentality and social life even as a 15 year old.
What I bet just today and lost it all. I was up over 1.5k from these items alone and I didn't once think about cashing out, all I could think about was winning and wanting more, the skins don't matter at this point, I just can't stop betting, the high, there is nothing better. I know I need help but I don't know how to stop, I want to, this has caused my life to become hell.
My bets just today that I lost - https://imgur.com/a/vxNGz

***Another good night 8-3!!*** Overall Total: 83-54, +53.45U and 39%ROI **\*
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Hi everyone**!** Late night last night, getting a slow start today while watching the CSGO grand finals. Here are the 330 games, I will post the later games before they start. Enjoy!
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NY/LAC: Ok, NY has been playing well offensively recently but has 0 defense. LAC have been a coin flip recently but look like they might find enough identity to limp into the playoffs. I like the clippers to win most of the time but 9.5 is a lot of points. My model has it closer to 6.5/7. Ill probably stay away from the spreads in this game but if your book has lines (mine currently doesnt) for M. Harrel on his points and Rebounds, i would look at overs.
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HOU/BOS: I feel rather weird about this one. My model has Bos as -4. the line is -2 and my gut has just been hating on Boston the last 2 weeks. I may swallow the stats and go with the underdog here purely out of gut. For props Id be looking at the 3point shooters for Boston specifically Rozier or Smart. For Houston I would look at Clint Capela. But these props are dependent on how you think the game script will go. If you think BOS keeps with the D and houstons road stats ring true its probably a game for the under and no prop plays. If you think its gonna be a Christmas rematch and Harden puts up 40+ again then I would look at props.
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ATL/CHI: My favorite game in the 330 slot. A rematch of the 4OT thriller that helped all the props cover 2 days ago. I am quite surprised the O/U is less than 240. With one of the highest projected paces I have seen all season this should be another shootout...Maybe the 4OT 2 days before is playing into the vegas judgement here? Im gonna stay away from the spreads most likely but with John Collins out again for sickness, ATL is lacking at the PF position. I am going to look for Lauri Markkanen to do some work again.
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***Taking a Break to watch the Astralis/ENCE CSGO Grandfinal. Will post the later games by 6pm**\*
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My picks summarized:
Last Post Recap: Singles (8-3 ,+5U ) Parlay(1-1, +1.6U) BBDLS (no bets)
Recap: This was another good day. If DAL won their game it would have been another killer day.
Todays Singles (Overall Total: 83-54, +53.45U)

• Lauri Markkanen 11.5 RBDs OVER
• Trae Young 25.5 PT OVER
• NY/LAC 227 OVER --- 2U
• HOU ml +120
• CHI/ATL 229 OVER

(All bets for this 330 slot are only for 0.5 Units. I didnt sleep much and didnt research much so I am cutting bet sizes in half today. Very LOW confidence in my picks today, be wary if you tail.)

So right now, MutHead has the pack simulator, binder sync, real life game betting with MHC, etc. and it's easily one of the best websites dedicated to an Ultimate Team out there. However, one way that, if it could be implemented, could really change the dynamic of MutHead would be implementing something along the lines of a MUT version of CSGOlotto.com. Honestly, the best way to learn about CSGOlotto.com is from watching a YouTube video (Here's one from TheSyndicateProject), but basically for CSGO you put up skins, which are worth a certain value, either in a pot with sever people and the more money you put in, the greater chance you have to win, or in a Head to Head bet, which is just a coin flip. I feel like this would work extremely well with MUT, being that each player has a price which is directly listed on MutHead, so it would be easy to get evenly matched H2H bets.
An example would be this: Player A has heads and puts up TOTW 99 Von Miller (335k value XB1) and Player B has tails and puts up 99 Christian Okoye and AR Marcus Mariota (333k total value XB1). The coin flips and whoever it lands on gets the other person's cards.
The problem I see with this though is getting the cards from people the participants. Both participants would have to be matched up with some kind of middleman from MutHead, probably, to make this all work.
It's just an idea I've been sitting on for a while and thought it would be a pretty cool thing if it was able to come to fruition. What do you guys think?