We have had issues for a long time in the way the site handles USD pricing for items. At present, we price refined based on cash sales, and then every item on the site gets a price derived from that. It has been pointed out repeatedly that this is not the best system, for two main reasons;

1) The vast majority of cash transactions happen in keys which trade at 1.85-1.95 USD, putting refined solidly around 0.06 USD. The difference isn't a small one. Refined moves very slowly. It's easily possible to move thousands of keys at 1.90 per key before moving even a few hundred refined at 0.08 per ref. When considering the intrinsic dollar value of all items, you have to keep these values in consideration - that the intrinsic refined value of all items is around 0.06 USD per ref.

2) Because refined moves so slowly, it's just not worth it from a time and energy perspective for highly reputable people to trade in refined. Refined moves most commonly on highly reputable sites such as marketplace.tf. People are willing to pay more for the convenience and added security. This additional value added is not part of the intrinsic value of the item itself and it certainly is not a value that gets transferred to all other items in the tf2 community, even keys.

So, what can we do to fix this problem? The best idea would be to instead price keys based on cash sales and then derive all item prices from that. However, this is currently not possible the way the site is hard-coded, and would require an enormous re-write on the part of the devs. While it’s always a consideration for the future, the mod team have decided that we need a better solution for now.

The idea we have come up with is something of a workaround. We will continue to price refined in USD but instead of using cash sales for refined itself, we will instead use cash sales for keys as the proof when pricing refined. We will then use the ratio of refined to keys at the time of the suggestion to get a more accurate suggested USD value for refined. Cash sales for keys occur significantly more frequently, and occur in bulk outside of sites such as marketplace which may add a premium for the safety and security. This will be a much, much more accurate method for estimating the intrinsic value of items in the game in USD.

We are happy to answer any questions that you have and explain our rationale further. We have an example to show how this would work in practice in the forum thread here[forums.backpack.tf]. You are also welcome to ask questions and discuss the changes there. Hopefully the community will see that this is a positive change that makes for much more accurate USD values on all items on the site.