What to Do When You Unbox an Expensive Item in CS
Have you just unboxed a knife, gloves, or some other high-tier item in CS? Are you wondering how to keep your item safe from scammers and impersonators or sell it? Look no further than EsportFire’s official guide for what to do when you unbox an expensive item in Counter-Strike.
Step 1: Keep Your Account Safe:
The first thing you need to do after unboxing an expensive item is to make your Steam profile private. Otherwise, your friend invitations will be flooded with scammers trying to steal your skins for monetary gain.
Next, you should be sure not to log into any sites with your Steam account. If you are logged in through Steam in sites that you're not sure are trustable, you should log out immediately and change your password, since these sites may have stolen your account info and now have access to your skins. Don't panic if you're signed in to legit skin marketplaces or other company pages! Once you change the password, we recommend writing it down somewhere on paper, just in case you forget the new password and lose access to your account.
Once these steps are completed, you should set up your Steam mobile authenticator, if you haven't already! This way, if someone tries to log into your account, they won’t be able to get in without you authenticating their login with your phone. Similarly, if anyone with access to your account tries to trade your skins to their own account, they won’t be able to do so without you confirming the trade on your phone. To set up the Steam mobile authenticator, go to: help.steampowered.com
The way to be 100% sure and safe from API Scams, you can activate Family View. When doing so you need to enter an extra code whenever entering your friend list or sending trades. In order to do so, you need to access your Steam settings, go to the "Family" tab, and "Manage Family View".
Next, you should be sure not to log into any sites with your Steam account. If you are logged in through Steam in sites that you're not sure are trustable, you should log out immediately and change your password, since these sites may have stolen your account info and now have access to your skins. Don't panic if you're signed in to legit skin marketplaces or other company pages! Once you change the password, we recommend writing it down somewhere on paper, just in case you forget the new password and lose access to your account.
Once these steps are completed, you should set up your Steam mobile authenticator, if you haven't already! This way, if someone tries to log into your account, they won’t be able to get in without you authenticating their login with your phone. Similarly, if anyone with access to your account tries to trade your skins to their own account, they won’t be able to do so without you confirming the trade on your phone. To set up the Steam mobile authenticator, go to: help.steampowered.com
The way to be 100% sure and safe from API Scams, you can activate Family View. When doing so you need to enter an extra code whenever entering your friend list or sending trades. In order to do so, you need to access your Steam settings, go to the "Family" tab, and "Manage Family View".
Step 2: Avoiding Scammers:
Almost instantly after you unbox an expensive item, sophisticated scammers, bots, and impersonators will try to add you in order to steal your skin. While many of them may appear to be legitimate traders offering real money for your skins, it is highly unlikely that they are anything more than a bad actors trying to take advantage of you for monetary gain. (We will later on in this article talk about cash trading) Be sure to ignore all of these individuals, and most importantly:
DO NOT CLICK ANY LINKS THEY SEND
These links are API phishers, and when you log into the links with Steam, they will have access to your Steam API key and may have compromised your account. If you accidentally click the link, do the following steps to ensure that your skins and your account are safe:
Deauthorize all devices: store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage Revoke the Steam API key: steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey Generate new backup codes from the first link, and change your password. Optionally, if you are concerned that the link you clicked may have installed malware on your device, run a scan with Malwarebytes: malwarebytes.com!
DO NOT CLICK ANY LINKS THEY SEND
These links are API phishers, and when you log into the links with Steam, they will have access to your Steam API key and may have compromised your account. If you accidentally click the link, do the following steps to ensure that your skins and your account are safe:
Deauthorize all devices: store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage Revoke the Steam API key: steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey Generate new backup codes from the first link, and change your password. Optionally, if you are concerned that the link you clicked may have installed malware on your device, run a scan with Malwarebytes: malwarebytes.com!
Step 3: Valuing Your Skin(s):
Now that your account is safely in your hands and you are no longer at risk of losing your skins to scammers and impersonators, you can take the following two steps to sell your skins for real cash. Firstly, you need to value your skin. To find the basic value of your skin, you can check buff.163.com and search for the skin you have unboxed. Be sure to use the link we have provided and not search for the link on Google, as many fake sites exist in order to steal your items.
Once you know the basic value of your skin, it is important to check to see if your unboxed item is worth any overpay(value higher than the buff.163 price). If your item has a lot of 0s in the float(such as 0.00005), it is worth overpaying. You can check csfloat.com/db to see where your item’s float ranks among those of the same item. The higher on the top, the higher the value of the skin, although it also highly depends on the skin itself if lower floats are a big or small overpay!
If you have unboxed a pattern-based item such as a Case Hardened or Fade knife, the value of your item may be significantly higher. As it's impossible to showcase all different patterns that are worth a big overpay we invite you to join our Discord and ask our admins for help! Just send a picture of your skin and tag the role @EsportFire. Please be respectful with our time and only ask us for feedback if we're talking about specific patterns on knifes or skins like Case Hardened skins. We love to help but our time is logically also limited. This guide should already solve most questions regarding an unbox and what to do.
Once you know the basic value of your skin, it is important to check to see if your unboxed item is worth any overpay(value higher than the buff.163 price). If your item has a lot of 0s in the float(such as 0.00005), it is worth overpaying. You can check csfloat.com/db to see where your item’s float ranks among those of the same item. The higher on the top, the higher the value of the skin, although it also highly depends on the skin itself if lower floats are a big or small overpay!
If you have unboxed a pattern-based item such as a Case Hardened or Fade knife, the value of your item may be significantly higher. As it's impossible to showcase all different patterns that are worth a big overpay we invite you to join our Discord and ask our admins for help! Just send a picture of your skin and tag the role @EsportFire. Please be respectful with our time and only ask us for feedback if we're talking about specific patterns on knifes or skins like Case Hardened skins. We love to help but our time is logically also limited. This guide should already solve most questions regarding an unbox and what to do.
Step 4: Selling Your Skin(s):
Once you have valued your newly unboxed item and ensured that your Steam account is uncompromised and safe from scammers, you can sell your skin. If you want to, you can sell the skin on the Steam Community Market in order to gain Steam balance which can be used to buy games or other CS2 items(keep in mind, if you just unboxed a good item, you shouldn’t quickly sell it to keep unboxing. That is how gambling addiction forms and might cost you a lot of money due to overseeing expensive patterns or a good float value). If you do decide to sell via the Community Market, remember that Steam incurs a 15 percent fee on the money you gain from the sale, and you cannot withdraw your Steam balance into real money.
There are multiple ways to sell skins for real money. The safest way of doing so is selling via legit and well-known third-party marketplace. We're partnered with GamerPay.gg, who are located in Denmark and offer you to sell your skins for 0 percent fees! They are a peer-to-peer marketplace where you can sell your skins to other users for great prices and without the risk of being scammed. After you sell the skin(s), you can withdraw your balance straight to your bank account for no fee. Other options would be skinport.com & bitskins.com. If you think about selling on other marketplaces again feel free to join our Discord and ask for help if you got concerns! Please also be careful when entering legit marketplaces via Google, as there are also pages that pay to advertise scam websites. Be very careful when clicking on "sponsored" websites.
Finally, if you want to sell the skin to another user directly without using a 3rd party site, you can sell to a cash trader, but keep in mind that this is a risky move. While there are plenty of trusted cash traders out there, there are significantly more scammers impersonating trusted traders. Here are a few important rules when selling to a cash trader:
There are multiple ways to sell skins for real money. The safest way of doing so is selling via legit and well-known third-party marketplace. We're partnered with GamerPay.gg, who are located in Denmark and offer you to sell your skins for 0 percent fees! They are a peer-to-peer marketplace where you can sell your skins to other users for great prices and without the risk of being scammed. After you sell the skin(s), you can withdraw your balance straight to your bank account for no fee. Other options would be skinport.com & bitskins.com. If you think about selling on other marketplaces again feel free to join our Discord and ask for help if you got concerns! Please also be careful when entering legit marketplaces via Google, as there are also pages that pay to advertise scam websites. Be very careful when clicking on "sponsored" websites.
Finally, if you want to sell the skin to another user directly without using a 3rd party site, you can sell to a cash trader, but keep in mind that this is a risky move. While there are plenty of trusted cash traders out there, there are significantly more scammers impersonating trusted traders. Here are a few important rules when selling to a cash trader:
- The “cash value” of skins is up to 95 percent of the price listing of buff.163. If someone offers you more than that, it is highly likely that they are scammers trying to convince you to trade with them by offering a too-good-to-be-true deal. If they offer less than that, they may be trying to “shark”(offer you less than the skin is worth to make a profit) you, so be firm on the 90-95% range.
- If a trader asks you to “go first”(send the skin before they send the money), you need to make sure that they are trusted. Keep in mind that Steam comments are not reliable sources of reputation, and rather you should check their csgo-rep.com profile to see reviews from their previous trades. CSGO-Rep is also not a 100% reliable source but gives you a good overview.
If you decide to sell for cash, we suggest selling to extremely trustworthy cash traders such as content creators or popular traders on Twitter. Due to the uncertainty and high risk of getting scammed without knowing how to find the right person to do a cash trade, we highly recommend selling through a third-party marketplace as mentioned above! It's also highly recommendable to add a very cheap skin when selling a higher-value skin for cash (For example a graffiti). With that simple method, you can avoid API scams to 99.99% as the impersonator who is sending a fake offer most likely doesn't have the same item and it will disappear in the trade offer.
Conclusion
We hope that we have been able to help you keep your freshly unboxed item safe from scammers and sell it for a good price. If we have helped you with this article and you want to support us, we would love to see you around more often! Feel free to check out one of our latest articles down below this paragraph.
