Counter-Strike skin guide
Topic: What are CS2 skins? How do they work?
Today we will try to give a general introduction on what CS2 skins are and how to get them. You will find out the most important details and features of CS2 skins. Enjoy reading and feel free to join our Discord if you got any further questions, our community will gladly assist you in joining the world of Counter-Strike skins.
Cases + Drops
Let's first figure out where skins come from. Like many popular video games, Counter-Strike has an integrated case-and-drop system. People can buy cases and unlock them with keys. Furthermore, you can also buy containers such as sticker capsules or souvenir packages. These don't require keys to open. Unlocking these can be quite pricey as older cases/containers get rarer and rarer the more they get opened and with that increase in price. Furthermore, you can also get lucky and get a good skin dropped after a game of Counter-Strike.
As usual, opening any kind of cases results in a loss of money for the grand majority, while some get lucky and unbox rare special items like knives or gloves that can cost a fortune. You can usually unbox skins for nearly every weapon within CS2 when opening a case. The red ones are normally the most expensive ones while blue's are the cheapest.
While you might have already noticed that we don't recommend opening cases, you might wonder where else you can get skins from? We will first take a look at floats and patterns and give you an answer to that question in the paragraph "Marketplaces".
As usual, opening any kind of cases results in a loss of money for the grand majority, while some get lucky and unbox rare special items like knives or gloves that can cost a fortune. You can usually unbox skins for nearly every weapon within CS2 when opening a case. The red ones are normally the most expensive ones while blue's are the cheapest.
While you might have already noticed that we don't recommend opening cases, you might wonder where else you can get skins from? We will first take a look at floats and patterns and give you an answer to that question in the paragraph "Marketplaces".
Float + Pattern
Every skin that gets unboxed has a unique float and pattern ID. Floats normally range from 0 to 100 (there are some exceptions that start higher or end below 100). The lower the float value the cleaner the skin. The float and wear of skins are assigned to five categories: Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well Worn and Battle-Scarred.
Patterns are another unique fact about skins. Every skin that gets unboxed or dropped has a pattern ID that ranges from 1 to 1000. While for some skins the pattern has close to no impact style wise, other skins hugely differ looks wise depending to the pattern you unbox.
Patterns are another unique fact about skins. Every skin that gets unboxed or dropped has a pattern ID that ranges from 1 to 1000. While for some skins the pattern has close to no impact style wise, other skins hugely differ looks wise depending to the pattern you unbox.
Marketplaces - Real Money Value of skins
Let's get to the point where you can get skins apart from unboxing them or receiving drops. There are many popular Skin Marketplaces, where you can buy and sell skins for real money. The original one is the Steam Community Market, where you can just deposit money to buy the skin of your choice. While it may be the start of all of it, it's definitely not the best option to buy and sell your skins as you can't cash-out your money to your bank account.
Over the last years many third party marketplaces developed. These enable you to buy skins directly with your bank account, as well as also sell them and get your money back to your bank account. Examples for these are Skinport, CSFloat, GamerPay, CS.Money, Bitskins and many more. In case you're interested in buying skins you can check out our Skin Database, search for the skin of your desire and compare the current listings of all the popular marketplaces.
Over the last years many third party marketplaces developed. These enable you to buy skins directly with your bank account, as well as also sell them and get your money back to your bank account. Examples for these are Skinport, CSFloat, GamerPay, CS.Money, Bitskins and many more. In case you're interested in buying skins you can check out our Skin Database, search for the skin of your desire and compare the current listings of all the popular marketplaces.
Conclusion
That's it for today's article, we hope that you got a good first insight to the CS2 skin economy and now better understand what skins are and how they work. In case you got any further questions feel free to ask them in the "community-chat" on our Discord.
