Whether it is because of the wear float, the pattern, the stickers, or any combination of these three elements, estimating the value of a skin in CS:GO can undoubtedly be a complex task, especially for newcomers. Let’s examine the distinct factors that may influence the price of an item so that you can avoid needlessly losing out on any potential earnings.

Pricing your skins – the basics

To begin pricing your skin you’ll need to determine its market price, or the base price, as it is often called. The base price is nothing else than the average of what the skin is usually sold for – this has to do with the weapon it’s designed for and the general attitude of the CS:GO traders towards any given item. It also concerns other factors which might be complicated to work out by yourself just yet.

That’s why the easiest way to find out the market price of a skin is to use the Steam Community Market. By checking out the buy orders on an item and looking at the price graph, you should get an approximation of the average price that will be a good starting point for pricing your skin.

The next thing you’ll need to look at is something called the “float value.” If you haven’t stumbled across it before, a float value is a value ranging from one to zero, assigned to every item in CS:GO upon creation. This value is a crucial factor in determining the price of a skin, as every float corresponds to a different item condition, thus changing the way a skin looks and feels.

Here’s a quick summary of what the float value ranges 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

As you can probably guess by now, the closer any skin is to the “Factory New” rating, the more expensive it gets. In other words, the lower float values correspond to higher prices, and that’s the main thing you’ll need to remember if you’re looking to sell CSGO skins. Many people will pay much more for items with a low float.

From here on out, things get a lot more interesting.

Notable outliers, patterns, and stickers

As a rule, the low float items are more expensive, but there are certainly many exceptions to this. The first thing you need to know is that float values don’t work the same way for every skin – some skins are available only in specific ranges. For example, the AK Redline skin only exists in the range between 0.10 and 0.70. Interestingly enough, skins don’t necessarily lose their worth at the lower float value ranges, as, for example, they might get darker instead of scratched as the value gets closer to 1. Sometimes they can also reveal new artwork that can make them equally or even more valuable in comparison to the factory new skins.

Patterns are the next big step in determining the price of a skin, although not every skin has them. The ones that do can potentially cost a lot more if the pattern template is applied in a way that is considered visually pleasing. That’s why it is not as easy as following a simple rule when pricing an item’s pattern – it’s a good idea to research them before selling. An excellent example of this is the well-known Case Hardened skins. These skins have many different styles of the skin. The most sought-after is the blue gem as they are the rarest and are considered the best looking by the CS:GO market. 

Stickers are the trickiest part to judge when it comes to pricing your items, as the multitude of ways in which they can be applied means that a high degree of subjectivity is involved. Generally speaking, you should aim to make weapons with stickers that are consistent with the color scheme of the skin. This process of adding stickers to skins that match and is called crafting. Some of the most valuable crafts are the AK-47: Fire Serpent with an IBuyPower Katowice 2014 Holo, an AK-47: Case Hardened Blue Gem with Titan Katowice 2014 Holos.  While adding a sticker will not add any general value to the skin. If a collector or fan is looking for that team and the skin you can sell it to them for a large markup of the general market price. 

Item pricing requires research

To summarize, even though there are some guidelines you can follow in determining the price of your skin to make sure you aren’t losing out on any earnings, you should definitely research every part of your item and its rarity to check whether your skin might possible be worth more than what the Steam Market values it at. If you’re looking to sell CS:GO skins, a great way to do it is through marketplaces, such as Skinwallet. Skinwallet allows you to view and buy CSGO skins easily by providing information like rare patterns, sticker value, HD screenshots of the skin, and special deals on skins. Check it out now – you might just decide to visit more often.