CS:GO Skins Quality: Everything You Need to Know

Our blog is dedicated to skins and other in-game items. We write daily about trading, selling and buying cosmetic items because we are committed to helping you make the most profit and build the Counter Strike inventory of your dreams. However, the only way to make this possible is to understand the basics of how weapon skins work. That’s why today we’re going to tell you all about the CSGO skins quality chart.

The Economy of Counter Strike Global Offensive

Counter Strike Global Offensive is one of the biggest games in the world. According to official statistics, it attracts 900,000 thousand players every month, and with the release of CS2, that number is sure to increase, which also means that the game’s economy will grow exponentially.

Cosmetic items, or skins, have played a huge role in the game’s development and rise in popularity. They were initially introduced in the legendary Arms Deal update, a big moment in CS history. Now there is no Counter Strike without them, and players are investing huge amounts of time and money in building their dream collections.

But what exactly are skins and why would anyone spend money on them?

What Are Weapon Skins in Counter Strike?

We assume that since you are reading this article, you probably know very well what skins actually are. However, in case there are any gaming newbies among us, we want to briefly explain the idea of cosmetic items.

CS:GO weapon skins (aka weapon finishes) are what we call cosmetic items. Cosmetic items, on the other hand, are in-game items that serve a purely cosmetic function, meaning that they only affect the appearance of a particular element and do not have any effect on its other characteristics, such as combat abilities, etc. In the case of Counter Strike, this means that with the help of skins, players can change the appearance of their favorite rifles, gloves, and knives, but not their fire rates, reload times, or penetration power.

How to Make Money Through Skin Trading?

So even if you’ve been playing Counter Strike for a few years, you may still be wondering: why do people make so much money trading skins?

Fortunately, we’re here to help you answer that question.

Skins quickly gained popularity because they were a great way for players to stand out on CS:GO maps. They could now show off their personality by putting bold designs on their AK-47s and AWPs. After all, what’s better than an emerald dragon on an SMG? Well, exactly. Nothing That’s why interest in cosmetic items continued to grow, and Valve kept releasing new collections. Demand for some pieces was extremely high, and so their prices skyrocketed. In fact, some finishes became almost a status symbol, and gamers were ready to spend an arm and a leg on them just to be able to flaunt them on Counter Strike maps. Moreover, people realized pretty quickly that if they made the right choices and invested in interesting items, they had a good chance of making a substantial profit from selling them later. Some skins had the potential to double their value overnight. And there are always users on the Steam marketplace willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for precious items that will bring their game inventory to a new level.

Why Are Some Skins so Expensive?

The prices of skins are driven mainly by the law of supply and demand.

This means that if a skin is extremely popular, but there are not many copies available, its price will be high. Conversely, if there aren’t many players interested in an item, and there are a lot of it on the market, its value is likely to be very low. That’s why prices on Steam always fluctuate and can change dramatically in a single day. Once weapon finishes are released by Valve and become available on online markets, it’s basically like the Wild West.

However, even if the developer does not directly influence the value fluctuations of an item once it is placed on the market, what it does have control over are the specific factors that impact the popularity of a skin and therefore, its final price.

What Factors Influence the Price of a Skin?

There are 3 main factors that affect the price of a given skin. These are:

• Belonging to a Collection
• Skin Wear
• Skin Rarity

What Exactly Is Skins Quality?

The quality of a skin can be summarized by taking into account all the above factors. Each of them contributes to the final price of a particular item, and therefore should be taken into account when buying and selling goods on the fur market. Having said that, let’s start with the basics.

First of all, you should know that there are many types of skins. Most of them have a white border around their preview symbol, but there are special exceptions, which include:

• Purple – Rare Special (★) items (Knife skins, gloves)
• Yellow – Souvenir skins
• Orange – StatTrak™ skins
• Dark Green – Genuine skins
• Light Green – Prototype skins

What Is Skin Rarity?

One of the most important indicators of the quality of a skin is its rarity, which is divided into grades. These are:

• Common – Consumer Grade, Base Grade
• Uncommon – Industrial grade
• Rare – Mil-Spec, High Grade
• Mythical – Restricted, Remarkable
• Legendary – Classified, Exotic
• Ancient – Covert, Extraordinary
• Exceedingly Rare – Rare Special, Gloves, Knives
• Immortal – Contraband

What Is Skin Wear?

Skin wear is also one of the most important factors in determining the value of a skin (and thus its quality), as it essentially indicates the condition of a given item. A single weapon finish can have different levels of wear, each costing a different amount. This is because, as in the real world, a brand-new, unused item is inevitably more expensive than its used counterpart.

Skins wear depends on the float value of a particular skin, that is, a number from 0 to 1, which determines which category the item falls into.

Here’s an overview of what the levels of skins wear are:

• Factory New (0.00-0.07)
• Minimal Wear (0.07-0.15)
• Field Tested (0.15-0.37)
• Well Worn (0.37-0.44)
• Battle-Scarred (0.44-1.00)

Are There Other Factors That Affect the Price of Skin?

The 3 factors mentioned above are the main things to pay attention to when investing in skins, as they characterize each of them. However, the quality of a given skin is a rather complex concept and, of course, also consists of other things, such as the fact whether an item has the StatTrak feature or comes from a souvenir package. In addition, there are cases where an object has been suddenly withdrawn from the market for some reason (an example is the M4A4 Howl, whose author filed a DMCA complaint), causing it to become extremely rare and its price to skyrocket overnight. Just like the stock market, the CS:GO economy is governed by its own rules, and these can surprise even the most experienced traders.

Conclusions

Skin quality is a complicated concept that has no clear definition. It consists of many factors, each of which can ultimately determine the price of an item. Therefore, if you are trying to start your adventure with trading, and you dream of earning solid cash, you should definitely read this article and understand terms such as skin rarity, skin wear, or other mechanisms that operate on the market of Steam.