Monthly CS:GO-NEWS
Topic: CS:GO Market Recap December 2021
Welcome to the first of many monthly skin market recaps for CS:GO!
The following article will include news for CS:GO skins about:
- New rare and unique unboxes
- New expensive and/or rare sticker crafts (Katowice 2014, Krakow 2017, contraband stickers etc.)
- Market changes (items going down/up)
- Official skin related content (new cases mostly, but anything from Valve)
- Uncategorized (New marketplaces, skins recently registered on or off databases)
Introduction
The CS:GO market can be very odd at times, and during December in particular. After a very long dip, some Team Liquid items have finally started to go back up in prices, which is actually a regular occurrence around this time of the year.
This is due to the ongoing holiday season, and friends and family gifting each other skins/games, among other factors. If you look at the price charts, you can see the same routine happening every year, peaking around mid February around the Chinese new year.
Small Investment Suggestion
In case you want to take advantage of the "natural trends around this time of year," we’d personally recommend Bayonet Dopplers as they usually bottom out at 265 USD around June - August, and peak at 330 USD around February. However, they’re currently going for around 310 USD, so you’re likely to only make a small profit, however, a very safe one, and a cool item to play around with for two months. (*no financial advice)
Other items however had much more… unnatural price spikes, which almost immediately went right back down.
This was no natural cause, just around the same time a lot of crypto prices crashed (up to 25%) due to this. A lot of people assumed that big crypto investors cashed out for CS:GO items and caused the manipulation.
There are alot of posts on forums and videos explaining that situation, but the best one we found that was well understandable was made by “TDM_Heyzeus”. (link to video)
New Unboxed/Newly Found Items
Almost every month, there's a very rare unbox/new item found. And maybe every two or three, a really expensive item, or low/high float item BUT this month, we got some crazy new items!
In December alone, we have had many interesting unboxes! It begins with a brand new #1 Stiletto Case Hardened that has been unboxed. From first glance, it might not seem like much, however a very special part about the Stiletto is that: It's a bluegem! Not any kind of bluegem though, a dual-sided one. Another cool fact about it: It´s the #1 Stiletto knife without a 0.07-0.0 float cap, meaning this item could have any float, making it extraordinarily rare, and extraordinarily expensive.
Another couple of very rare float skins have been dropped recently, one of which was a Mag-7 Rust Coat, which at first might seem like a super basic skin, but the special thing is… It's the #1 highest float in the world! With a float of 0.9999998, there are currently eight skins with that exact float as it´s the highest float possible in CS:GO. This however is the first of the of the eight that isn't mil spec grade.
The other skin is a Huntsman Knife Tiger Tooth, said to have a float of 0.0000019, which is the newest #1 Huntsman Knife!
Two really interesting skins were recently found, a Bayonet Vanilla and a USP-S Flashback. You might wonder why we call those two skins "really interesting"? They seem like nothing too special at first, but there are some interesting facts about them, let’s start with the Bayonet.
The new #1 Bayonet vanilla was recently found on Skinport. You might think to yourself, what…? A #1 vanilla? Vanillas don't have floats, well… they do, they're just hidden. They are capped at 0.06 meaning their float cannot go any lower than 0.06, sort of like Crimson Webs, however this Bayonet vanilla was granted by Steam Support to a scammed user (long ago, steam support would grant new items to scammed users which created duplicated items), due to this being a vanilla, Steam Support did not take the time to check the float or made it by mistake and just gave the user a 0.00 float item.
Which ended up creating a brand new impossible item, this has been sitting in the users inventory since 2014 and was unnoticed until Skinport created a float database on the 9th of December which logged the skin. With that it was finally seen and noticed by the public.
Another interesting skin found on Skinport with their new database was a USP-s Flashback, a restricted skin in the Dangerzone collection, nothing special… except for the fact that it is special!
The USP-s has a float of 0.0000000030, (that's 8 zeros!) the #4 lowest float skin over-all, #1 USP-S and the #1 lowest float restricted skin
The skin was listed on Skinbid, a popular CS:GO skin auction site some time later!
A new #1 highest float Desert Hydra has been unboxed.The special part about it: It´s a souvenir! In more detail a 0.5999 Desert Hydra! You might wonder why that´s the highest float Hydra? The skin is float capped at 0.6 and due to trade-up items not being available at very high floats, the highest float trade-up you can do is a .57 with a 5% chance for the Hydra.
Desert Hydras scopes are black if the float value is above .56, which is why these are more desirable, a little like we know it from the AWP “Blackiimov”. Worth mentioning is that two days later (on 20th of December) the #2 Desert Hydra was unboxed, with a float value of 0.5990. Most exciting part about it: It´s ALSO a souvenir!
Somehow, two massive skin websites made even more massive mistakes by creating bugs where users could buy skins for much cheaper than they were truly worth in December. One took it very lightly and laughed it off, and the other did… err… the exact opposite.
The TradeIt Situation
TradeIt.gg is a popular trading website where you… well, trade in your skins and get brand new ones. These websites commonly host discounts for deposits, usually from 20-40%, on TradeIt there's usually a 30% off discount for your first ever deposit, however TradeIt decided to add-on another optional one time discount for the popular Youtuber sparkles.
Basically you put in his code and get 40% off as a sponsorship. However they oversaw the fact that those two discounts could be stacked and created a 70% off discount, after the trading site fees, you could buy skins for 45-65% of the regular cash price.
The site had the bug going for 3 hours, and from what we understood, it was swept clean from every little skin, the site was practically empty and some people were spending thousands, so they could make back as much as possible.
If you want to have a full overview of the situation make sure to check out our article about it:
TradeIt With A 70% "Discount Code".
How Did TradeIt Handle The Situation?
You would expect a website that lost thousands of dollars in revenue to be mad… right? Nope! They took it so light-heartingly, congratulating people for taking advantage and being smart with it.
Not just saying “It is okay that you swiped us clean” but also using the situation to promote their site and draw in new members.
Every 12th some active users will experience this “Bug” again and get the chance to withdraw for 45-65% of the cash value, stated by TradeIt on Twitter. In the end TradeIt really made the best out of the situation!
The CS:GO Empire Situation
Recently a popular CS:GO gambling website called “CS:GO Empire” had a similar situation. The site bases their crypto rates off Coinbase. Coinbase had a small bug where the prices were absolutely messed up (most cryptos were displayed in absurd levels, usually in the millions of dollars for only one coin). This, however was only a visual bug, for some reason though, CS:GO empires prices were DESTROYED, meaning you’d get a very large amount of balance for very little money, (from what we could gather, only depositing $5 worth of Ethereum would give you around $40,000 worth of balance)
The bug only went on for a couple of minutes before it got resolved, but still the site was swiped clean. Unlike TradeIt, the users with the "cheated balance" were banned. (you can’t withdraw coins through a bank and could only withdraw to crypto… which would make you end up with the same amount you started, meaning CS:GO withdrawals were your only option)
While the way they handled the situation was better in that they fixed it much faster, they handled the result MUCH worse, banning the players instead of revoking the balance made people much more “toxic” towards CSGOEmpire.
Overall Summary!
December really was an interesting month in the CS:GO community. A lot of ups and downs at the start of the month, but more importantly very cool new unboxed skins, from what we could gather this was all the important stuff that happened during December.
Another interesting (and odd) website update that is worth mentioning was done by Buff163, a popular Chinese marketplace. They completely removed the "trends" tab, a part of the website which would give you info on the items that went up/down the most in the past day, 7 days or 30 days.
Thanks a lot for reading through and joining us on our new series here on EsportFire! If we missed anything worth mentioning make sure to let us know in the comments on our social medias!
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Editors note:
We wish you all a beautiful end of the year, enjoy the time with you beloved ones and may 2022 bring you everything you desire! Much love and thanks for the ongoing support!
