CS GO skins are just as part of the gameplay experience as the matches themselves. Here’s everything you need to know about the weapon skins in Counter-Strike. A guide of how you can buy, sell, or trade them easily.
CS: GO is one of the best competitive FPS shooting games out there! Since the game has gone to free to play, the popularity of the competitive nature of the game has increased in every household. To make each match a bit colorful and less monotonous. The CSGO weapons, knives, gloves, and loadout skins give a customization option for each gun and melee class. Of course, skins do not affect nor reflect the weapons and the skill set you possess in actual gameplay. But they give you a unique identity as well as some flare to your guns.
Getting rare skins without the need to grind has made collecting, buying, selling, and trading skins a lucrative market. It acts simply as a digital asset. You can use this knowledge and assets to trade the right items at the right time. Here is everything you need to know about unlocking skins for weapons in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, rare collectors skin, and trading skins directly through Steam.
Unlocking CS GO Skins
After completing a CS: GO match, you receive drop items, in which you can get skins for weapons. The matching drop items are common in rarity and chance and do not hold any significant value. You also receive Weapon Crates from matches, and they require specific crate keys to unlock them and cost about $2.5. These Drop Crates contain rare items.
Weapons Skin Rarity and Weapons Quality
When the demand for an item is high but rare, and the odds to get something are slim. The commodity’s value in question increases; it’s economy 101! CS: GO, skins have no set monetary value, the rarer, harder to get, and cool skins have much more value. Here are the rarity classes you need to know for skins and their color codes.
- Consumer Grade skins (White) Very common and can be found in regular play weapon drops.
- Industrial Grade skins (Light blue) Common
- Military Spec skins (Blue) Rare but can easily be acquired through cases.
- Restricted skins (Purple) Hard to come by and hold significant resale value.
- Classified skins (Pink) Very rare and quite expensive.
- Covert (Red) skins Extremely expensive and rare! If you get your hands on one of these, you can quickly pay more than months worth of expenses when reselling.
- Contraband Skins: skins that can no longer be acquired through weapon drops and weapon crates and have been deleted from the crates system. But, those who got their hands on one of these still own the skin. Currently, there is only one Contraband Skin in CS GO, the M4A4 | Howl. The limited supply gives the Contraband Skin a lot of resale value.
- Star Badge Items: Knive skins with the star badge are ultra-rare and extremely hard to come by and hold a lot of resale value.
There is also another aspect to the value and rarity of skins, which is the weapon quality. Weapon quality is a randomly predetermined class given to skins, which adds more significant value to the skins. Here are the weapon quality classes you need to know. There are in total five wear categories a skin can have:
- Factory New (0.00 – 0.07) highly valuable and uncommon
- Minimal Wear (0.07 – 0.15)valuable and uncommon
- Field-Tested (0.15 – 0.38) uncommon
- Well-Worn (0.38 – 0.45)common
- Battle-Scarred (0.45 – 1.00) common.
These values do not change in daily use, so you can rest assured you can use your ultra-rare factory new skin in every battle. This weapon quality gives another bell curve to evaluate skins in the market.
Buy and Sell CSGO Skins from the Steam Community Market
The Steam Community Market is a general trading service where players can buy or sell in-game dropped items on the platform. Steam Community Market should not be confused with the main Steam store. You can find many common and uncommon skins to ultra-rare skins. These can go for hundreds and even thousands of dollars in the Steam Community Store. But before you head over to buy skins, there are some things you need to know before heading out.
- There is a security procedure you need to follow before entering the marketplace. You will need to download the Steam Mobile app on your smartphone and enable the Steam Guard. A five-character code will be generated every thirty seconds. You will need to punch in the codes when you log into Market Place.
- After using the service, you will be restricted for fifteen days to the market place.
- Newly traded items have a trade hold of seven days.
These security measures are cumbersome and time-consuming but ensure reliable and safe methods for regulating the market place. Here is how to buy skins from the Steam Community Market.
- Head over to the Steam desktop app or website and log in with your credentials and the Steam Guard key.
- Click on the Community tab>Market Place.
- Click on Browse by Game on the right side of the window.
- After entering the CS GO market, you will be presented with the list of skins. You can further narrow down your search for the class of skins using the filter options.
- Click on the selected item you wish to purchase, hit the green button, you will be redirected to the skin’s website. Then you can pay for the skin through the Steam Wallet or other payment methods.
How to Sell CS: GO Skins on the Steam Community Marketplace
- Head over to the inventory section in CS: GO.
- Preview the item and click on the Sell button from the description window.
- You will be presented with a graph showing the popularity, rates and much more information to decide the price. Ultimately, you choose the selling price.
The Steam Community Market place does have its security measures. The cash spent and received cannot be encashed into real money and can be only be spent in the Steam ecosystem. This system allows you to buy in-game items, games, and DLC’s from the Steam Store. There are third-party skin marketplace services that allow the buying and selling of skins in real money. Serious profits can be earned through these marketplaces and are reliable.
Some Highly Valuable and Sought After Skins
- AWP-Dragon Lore
- FAMAS-Commemoration
- M4A4-The Emperor
- Five-SeveN-Angry Mob
- AK-47-Asiimov
Final Words
The CS GO skin craze has begun! For collectors and people on the lookout, times are good! Some of the best deals on trading skins to customize weapons and characters is happening now. We hope our guide to CS: GO skins has helped you on your journey. Buying and trading some of your precious skins and collectibles can earn real money that can be easily spent on the Steam Store online.