Guide on DreamHack 2013 Souvenir Skins
Topic: A Collector's Guide on DreamHack 2013 Souvenirs
Welcome to (one of) the biggest DreamHack 2013 guide there is! We're going to dive deep into CS:GO's first major, and give you a complete overview of it's unique souvenirs, from a collector's perspective. In addition, a plethora of previously private/hidden information concerning topics like the Valve pre-event tests, the glitched "no text" M249 Gator Mesh and more, is detailed in this piece.
No souvenir collector worth their salt ignores the historical context of their souvenirs. To that end, this guide also serves as a timeline of the Dreamhack 2013 Major, to better understanding what makes these items truly special & unique. Make yourself comfortable and dive deep into our guide! However much you know about this major, you'll surely learn a lot here!
Arms Deal Update
At this juncture, customization options were limited to the skins themselves, with the most sought-after being the vivid ones, standing out against the more common military and camo designs. Valve's initial focus on realistic skins facilitated the birth of CS:GO's economy, leveraging procedural systems for creating diverse collections from single textures, setting the stage for the future richness of in-game customization.
DreamHack 2013: Qualified Teams
- NiP
- N!faculty
- SK Gaming
- Copenhagen Wolves
- Universal soldiers
- Natus Vincere
- Astana Dragons
- comLexity Gaming
- VeryGames
- Clan-Mystik
- Fnatic
- iBUYPOWER
- LGB eSports
- Recursive (formerly We got Game)
- Xapso
- Reason Gaming
In addition, Online qualifiers were held, which allowed LGB and Recursive to qualify over Reason and EnRo GRIFFINS. Reason would still go on to qualify by participating in the following BYOC qualifier, as well as Xapso, beating both mousesports and Nostalgie.
Sadly, the Australian VOX Eminor would not qualify despite having a good run-up until the quarterfinal, where they would lose against Xapso.
DreamHack 2013 Stickers & Drop Format
Whenever a player opens a DH13 souvenir package, the following happens:
- The game randomly selects a map collection (all included in the same package)
- The game randomly selects a weapon from the map collection
- The game randomly selects a sticker from one of the twelve possible options
- The game randomly applies said sticker on one of the 4 or 5 default sticker slots of the weapon
- When applied, the stickers are also rotated and resized randomly
- Finally, a random wear percentage is also applied on the sticker, similar to a skin's float value
That being said, it makes perfect sense for Valve to include so many random factors in the early souvenirs, as that would allow the creation of a souvenir economy by shipping a variety of skins quickly. The most desirable souvenirs were therefore:
- Higher quality (and more colorful) skins (classified, restricted, etc…)
- Sticker placement
- A foil tournament sticker (with the frosty being the most expensive)
- A sticker with good rotation, size, and the least amount of wear.
Finally, it is interesting to note this tournament is one of two to feature skins from the safehouse, lake, and Italy collections, the other one being Katowice 2014. In addition, the bugged R8 Bone Mask from the bank collection is also available, but we’ll go over that in a later section.
Valve pre-event tests
Souvenirs that dropped from these tests can be identified by the match information "dropped during the Valve Pre-Event Test match between Valve Squad Alpha and Valve Squad Bravo."
The farthest screenshot I could find of this legendary match shows a scoreline of 8 to 4 in favor of Valve Squad Bravo, with a total of 16 items dropped, and a viewership of around 6200. If we assume the game went to round 20 and ended prematurely, there would be around 27 drops by that time. If the 16-11 scoreline mentioned on Reddit stands true, then we’re looking at a figure closer to 36 drops.
DH13 Valve test match souvenir drops guide by Lurker: Steam Guide
Lurker wrote very helpful guides listing all currently known pre-event skins for both Dreamhack 2013 and Katowice 2014. In his DH13 guide, he lists a total of 25 currently known Valve Squad Alpha vs Bravo souvenirs, which aligns pretty well with our estimate from the screenshots. For reference, it was previously thought to be around 60 drops, which is likely twice as much as what actually dropped.
Pricing (as of 27.02.2024)
For reference, The recent auction of known pre-event collector omar_anwari’s inventory was probably one of the largest recorded sales of such items. Community members helped PC the items on sale. As such, we can see consumer-grade items going for about 250 USD, or 1900 RMB as of the writing of this. More expensive souvenirs, notably the ones featured on usable guns like the M4, approach the thousand-dollar mark.
NiP pre-event tests
However, instead of internal employees, this pre-event match was played on de_aztec, pitting NiP’s 2007 CS 1.6 squad against their 2013 CS:GO squad (it’s important to note the members were shuffled).
NiP Team A
- SpawN
- walle
- Xizt
- Fifflaren
- GeT_RiGhT
NiP Team B
- Friberg
- zet
- HeatoN
- f0rest
- Potti
As the second test involved NiP, the most popular Counter-Strike team at the time, the viewership was a lot higher, meaning there are likely at least 3x the number of drops when compared to the first pre-event test (somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 drops).
In addition, the match was split into two legs, with one half being played on 1.6 (obviously with no drops), and the other being played on Global Offensive. I guess they did it for the sake of fairness(?)
That aside, Lurker’s guide on all currently known NiP Team A vs Team B souvenirs lists a total of 119 known souvenirs, which aligns with our estimate from earlier. The collections dropped seem to be identical to the ones tested in the first pre-event test: Steam Guide
Pricing of the NiP pre-event test
Interestingly, the highest-grade pre-event skin currently known seems to be these NiP Team A vs B restricted Cobalt Quartz Dualies with a snowflake foil sticker. In today’s market, they could easily fetch upwards of 3.5 - 4k RMB.
Exhibition Match: Duncan vs Tomi
Analysts Thorin (Duncan Shields) and Lurppis (Tomi Kovanen) picked 5-players for a show match to start the event, with the teams finally composed of:
Team Duncan
Dosia
kennyS
TaZ
starix
Delpan
Team Tomi
markeloff
Skadoodle
anger
pasha
KQLY
Teamless, 0 text souvenirs DreamHack 2013
The first owner, Chocolate Coconut Cake, sold it alongside an array of teamless and pre-event souvenirs to McLaren’t for a total of 7000$, or approximately 50k RMB. It is hard to extract its valuation from that trade alone, as the price of these items was much lower back then, to begin with, but we can infer that it probably sold for less than a thousand dollars at that time.
In any case, teamless souvenirs appear to be rarer than exhibition/group stage drops, but still fairly common when compared to pre-events, which in my view eliminates the possibility of them being from an unknown test match.
According to Dutch’s famous guide, these have started to flood the market around 2015, and with the help of some boolean logic, it is possible to find these on the Steam community market with a simple search string: commemorates NOT dropped.
Bank Collection R8 Revolver
As such, a few Souvenir R8 revolvers Bone Mask were opened in said souvenir packages, despite them not being officially listed as souvenir skins. Therefore, we can deduce this was most likely unintentional on Valve’s part, and some sort of bug/glitch. As the chance of unboxing one is so rare, and as the packages got more expensive by then, Valve probably didn’t bother fixing it due to the small amount of players it actually affects.
CS:GO Unique Skins & Items: Steam Guide
According to this steam guide, Only 8 revolver bone masks have been unboxed so far (in part due to the price of old Dreamhack 2013 and Katowice 2014 packages, the only two majors to feature skins from the bank collection). Of which, two were teamless, and a single one from Katowice 2014 has been unboxed by youtuber TDM_HeyZeus. They’re currently selling for several thousands depending on sticker & placement.
What’s more, it should also theoretically be possible to unbox a souvenir R8 amber fade from an older tournament package such as a dreamhack 2013 or Katowice 2014, however this has yet to happen, most likely due to the amber fade being a restricted skin, which is much harder to obtain than a consumer-grade like the bone mask, without even factoring in the cost of doing so.
It seems that Valve has learned from this lesson, and so far the only weapon introduced after the R8 (the mp5) hasn’t been retroactively added to any collection or souvenir package.
Pricing & Desirability
In addition, as is the case for most skins, higher grade, and therefore more colorful skins fetch higher prices than more military-looking ones. The only exception to this rule are Souvenir AWP/AK safari meshes, and urban DDPAT M4s to some extent. These skins usually command higher prices than a higher-grade souvenir from the same tournament, due to them being on main weapons & the finish having a high contrast with stickers.
For anyone new to souvenirs, tournament stages also play a role in determining a souvenir’s value. This is particularly evident for Dreamhack 2013 souvenirs, due to the lack of team stickers, which only leaves the tournament stage, sticker, and skin as the factors for value. Usually, the closer to the Grand Finals the souvenir is, the less valuable it becomes (excluding team stickers and other factors). For Dreamhack 2013, the order of value & rarity is quite clear.
Starting with the rarest and most desirable, we have:
- Valve Pre-events
- NiP Team A vs B Pre-events
- Teamless souvenirs
- iBUYPOWER group stage souvenirs
- Exhibition match (tomi vs duncan)
- Group Stage
- Quarter, semi and Grand Finals
Finally, as with most souvenirs, certain teams command higher prices than others. This is especially the case for iBUYPOWER souvenirs, which despite lacking the team sticker, still fetch higher than their group stage counterparts.
Rarest 1/1 souvenirs from DreamHack 2013
- The previously mentioned Blank Souvenir, M249 Gator Mesh.
- The Souvenir M4A1-S Nitro FN, of which only a single DH13 exists.
- The Souvenir Dual Berettas | Cobalt Quartz WW, another skin with only one known in existence.
- The Souvenir AWP | Pit Viper WW, with a lone DH13 variant.
- The Souvenir MP9 | Orange Peel FN, of which again, only one is known to exist.
Moreover, many of the Valve & NiP pre-event souvenirs could technically be classified as 1/1, but as they are tied to the stage rather than the tournament, they won't be included in this particular rundown. For a broader exploration of all known pre-event souvenirs, Lurker's guide is available for further examination.
Notable & unique appearance teams
In addition, it seems Valve didn't update the souvenir text on the dropped items, likely due to the ongoing nature of the tournament. As a result, the souvenirs from Recursive continued to bear the "WE GOT GAME" team name, persisting even through to the quarter-finals.
This event wasn't the only unique narrative of the tournament. Teams like Astana Dragons, n!faculty, VeryGames, Universal Soldiers, Xapso, and the previously mentioned Recursive, made their sole appearance in this tournament. Post-event, many of these lineups underwent transitions—either being acquired by other eSports brands, like Universal Soldiers morphing into Virtus.Pro, or disbanding to form new teams, as was the case with Astana.
Major Stories
Clan-Mystik, the ESWC Champions of 2013, experienced an early elimination during the group stages of the Dreamhack winter tournament. This was a notable point as they had recently won the ESWC 2013 Grand Finals against VeryGames, showcasing their potential as a possible major winner.
However, during the group stage, Clan-Mystik managed to secure one win and two losses, placing third in their group and thus failing to advance to the playoff stage.
VeryGames Semifinal Run (ScreaM's Best Result)
VeryGames had a significant run in the Dreamhack 2013 Major, making it to the semifinals. One of their key players, ScreaM, was particularly instrumental in their performance throughout the year, including in this tournament.
Sadly, this would go on to ultimately be ScreaM’s best performance in a CS:GO major.
Recursive's Acquisition of We Got Game and Quarter-final Run
3 days after qualifying in the BYOC last-chance qualifier, as previously mentioned, The We Got Game lineup would be bought by Recursive, and thus compete under that name. The Maniac-lead team would feature France’s upcoming CS:GO prodigy, kennyS, among other notable names.
Recursive made it all the way to the quarter-finals, where they lost against the eventual finalists, Fnatic.
Conclusion
Last but not least: A big shout-out to the people that contributed in making this guide possible: @MVPHAS, @defnite, Coconut_Cake, Jesbus & Minion!