Recipe To Success

This guide will teach you everything you will need to know about trading and there will also be some extra trading information to increase your knowledge about trading. This guide has been made with all the best materials out there plus tons of other great advices from the trading community. Some of the information here are also taken from other threads

Hello and welcome to my trading guide to TF2

Today this guide will teach you how to trade from scratch. It will cover the basics of trading and so on. Everything here is based on my experience in trading and I have discussed with other traders to give you the best of the best guide in TF2 about the mecahnics of trading.

It would be helpful if you find this guide helpful, rate it, favorite it and tell your friends about this guide.

If this guide was not helpful to you, I would appreciate your criticism on this guide

**WARNING THIS GUIDE WOULD PROBABLY TAKE YOU QUITE SOME TIME TO READ**

Securing your account

In every game you played you should know that getting hacked is not fun at all. It will always make you depress whenever you get hacked.

Here are some tips to secure your account.

Turn on Steam Guard
Having Steam Guard turned on is one of the most important thing in securing your account. It is a double security protection to your account. After entering your account username and password into a computer which you have never log your steam details inside, Steam Guard will automatically pop up to ask you for the code comfirmation which they have sent to your email. By doing this, not only must you log into your email to collect the code, it also protects your account from hacker because of this double protection.

Steam Guard also allows you to trade.Without steam guard, you would not be able to trade.

Using Gmail

I recommend using Gmail for your Steam Account.By enabling the 2 step verification on Gmail, even if your password to your email is guesses, cracked, or stolen, the hacker can’t sign in to your Gmail without the verification code, which you can only obtain via your cell phone that is registered for the verification.

And thus gives your account a 3 wall protection.

Other tips to preotect your account

- Do not use the same password and username for both your steam account and email as this will allow the hacker to hack into your account easily.

- Do not tell people your email that you use for steam as this will increase the chance of your account to be hacked.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a link on how to turn on Steam Guard

Trading philosophy

1.Always remember to buy items low and sell it high.
2.Take the initiative to offer your items to people, it is shown that you will get a better deal from this
3.To get a good deal you also need to be at the right place at the right time. (Example: You enter a trade server and you see someone selling their items for dirt cheap)
4.Always research the price of items before you sell it off
5.Try not to sell your item below the price you bought it for
6. Always negotiate with traders to sell you items lower then what they are worth
7. When selling items especially unusual hats,low crafts and collector leveled items, patience is virtue
8.New items = Hyped -> High demand and low supply. Thats the only time where prices of the new item are truely at its highest

Things you got to do before you start trading

1.To be able to trade, you need to first get your account Steam Guard protected.
2.Your TF2 account must be premium so that all the dropped items you get in TF2 will be tradable. And there are 2 ways to become premium.
2A.The first way is by buying an item from the store
2B.The second way is to have someone to give you an upgrade to premium gift

Currencies in game

These are the currencies used in the game

4 Random normal crates = 1 Weapon
2 Weapons = 1 Scrap
3 scraps = 1 Reclaimed Metal
3Reclaimed Metal = 1 Refined Metal
Current price of Keys in Refined Metal[tf2finance.com]
Current price of Earbuds in Keys[tf2finance.com]

Common Trading Terms

Lowball -> Low valued offer
B/O -> Buyout of the hat
C/O -> Current offer
Scrapbank -> Exchanging 2 weapons for a scrap
1 sec -> Give me a minute i need to check out something
Rep ->Reputation
BP -> Backpack
LF -> Looking for
WTT -> Wanting to Trade
WTS -> Wanting to Sell
WTB -> Wanting to Buy
Rec -> Reclaimed Metal
Ref -> Refined Metal
Buds -> Earbuds
Dirty -> Gifted items/Uncraftable items/ Duped items
Tentative -> An offer made by a person which he is uncertain whether he would trade for your item

Item qualities

All the weapons you start with in TF2 is found in Stock quality but you cannot trade these weapons away. You can only trade the stock weapons away if you rename with a name tag or a description tag. But by doing that, your stock quality weapons becomes a unique quality weapon. There are also stock quality items that are tradable. These tradable stock items are given to people by steam support if their account got hacked. Unfortunately they stop doing so ever since traders took advantage of it and sell it off for a higher price

Unique
Unique quality items are the most common of all item qualities. You can get them through item drop. They come in the form of crates, weapons and hats.

Collector
Collector items are aquired from collector's chemistry set. To create a collector item, you will need 200 of the same item with the collector chemistry set to create it. Example to make a Collector Sandvich, you will need a collector sandvich chemistry set and 200 sandviches.These items do not have any extra special attributes.

Strange
Strange item tracks kills or points. And every time you score or kill a certain number of players using that strange item, it ranks up, thus its front name changes. Strange items comes in the form of hats and weapons. To get a strange weapon, you will need to uncrate crates.Certain crates you uncrate, will give you certain strange weapons. These strange weapons will be relisted in the future crates though.There is also another type of strange weapons called botkillers. To aquire these botkillers, you will need a tour of duty ticket[mfortress.com] and play a match in a Valve offical Mann Vs Machine. To get strange hats, you will need to apply a strangifier to it. You can also track things like buildings destroyed together with number of people you killed using strange parts. You can apply a total of 3 strange parts to your strange weapon though. Strange parts, like strange weapons, come from certain crates. Do note that any crate number under crate #19 will not give you any strange weapons but rather unique weapons.

Vintage
Vintage quality items are items that were once in the form of unique but after a certain date, they were changed by Valve to Vintage in March 15 2011

Genuine
Genuine quality items can only be gotten through pre-ordering a game on steam so they are limited. This is done by Valve to raise sales for the game. You also can get genuin eitems by playing in TF2 competitions like highlander.
List of genuine items -> http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Genuine

Community
Community quality items are given out to people who have contributed to TF2.

Self-Made
Self-Made items are untradable except for Self-Made keys. To get a self-made item, you will need to contribute an item to the game like making a hat in TF2 and then Valve approves of the hat and it gets released into the game. To get Self-made keys, your item will need to be accepted into the game during a big update. Do note that if you use a self made key to uncrate a crate, you will get a regular item from 1 of the contents from the crate. it will NOT give you a self-made quality item from the crate. All self-made item have sparkling effect attached to it.

Unusual
There is only 2 ways to acquire unusual quality items. One is by trading and the other way is by uncrating crates. There is only a 1% chance of uncrating an unusual from a crate but in crate #1 there is a 2% chance of uncrating an unusual. Not all unusual effect could be gotten through a normal crate. Like a robo crate #58 can get you only robo effects and a crate #51 can only get you halloween effects. There is also another unusual item which comes in a form of a weapon called Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker but it does not have any effects.

# Items
# items are unique quality items with a # number at the back[www.tf2items.com] which can be seen in game. These items can be acquired by being the 1st 100 people to craft that item.If you are the 101th person to craft the item, your item would not have a # at the back, but if you look through a 3rd party TF2 community website it would say #101 behind of the item you crafted.Not all items in existence in TF2 have it though.

Valve
Valve quality items are only given to employees of Valve. They have very high stats. So do not expect to be killed by one any time soon

Haunted
Haunted quality items are only found on some Halloweeen exclusive items. They are also worth more than their unique counterparts.

TF2 Trading community

There are many people who build up the trading community

1.The Bronies (My little pony fanboys)
2.The Asshats (The people who are unreasonable)
3.The Russians/Koreans (The people who uses google translate to speak with you in English 24/7)
4.The scammers/hackers/sharkers (The people who use devious tactics to become rich)
5.The casual traders (The people who trade for fun)

During your trading journey, you will encounter all these people

Things you should not do/do in trading

Just like society has rules, trading has its own set of rules also
1.Do not scam
2.Do not shark
3.Do not buy items from scammers or sharkers as you will motivate them to prey on innocent traders
4.Do not do cash trades with people with a private profile,low number of friends and a newly created account as they might have the intention of scamming you
5.Always get a trustworthy middleman from Steamrep when you do a cash trade with another person
6.No matter how much reputation a person might have, always take precaution of them when you do cash trades as there has cases been trustworthy traders have scammed other traders.

Getting started into trading!

If you buy an item from the store you would probably be wondering about this. Which item should i buy? Should i buy a hat,a weapon or a key?

Well the item you should get is the key.A key could get you a few hats which makes it more valuable than the hat and the weapons.

On average, a hat is being sold at the mann co store for $5 USD.
In trading, a key can get you 5 craftable hats or 6 craftable hats if you are lucky and a key only cost $2.50USD.

So how do I start to profit from trading then?
You can start profiting by doing some simple trades. You can first use a key and buy 5 hats. After that you can sell the hat for 1.66ref if the hat is worth 1.33ref you can also sell it above 1.66ref if the hat is worth more 1.33ref. Ideally you should always sell hats 1rec~1ref above its normal price thus leaving you a good sum of profit.

With that profit, use it to buy more keys to buy more hats so that you can increase your capital by selling it off again.

There are also other ways to profit like scrapbanking where you trade your scrap for 2 weapons and sell the weapons for 1 scrap each giving you a weapon profit for every weapon you sell

The next way to profit is to sell keys for a higher price and buy them for a low price.

If you are lucky, sometimes you might find people who went for an uncrating spree and you might be able to get all their unwated loot from the crates for a discounted price which you can sell it for a higher price.

Also based on what i have seen, selling items in sets would also boost the price of the items in a class set.

A common set includes
- A strange primary weapon
- A strange secondary weapon
- A strange melee weapon
- A hat
- 2 misc
- A taunt

There are tons of ways to profit from trading but the points i have listed here are just 1 of the few ways to profit.

How do I get discounts on items?
Most traders will give you a discount on items if you
1. Buy items regularly from them
2. Buy a bunch of items from them

With this method, you can buy it off them for a cheap price and resell it for a higher price. But you should always research whether you are getting a good deal out of it as some traders sell their items higher than the market price.

Why do some trades say that I have to overpay in items?

Lets start with the basics on whats pure and whats item

Pure is TF2 currency like Keys,Refined metal ETC

Items are stuff like Hats

Traders generally do not want items as they will have to resell item again. So they would ask for an overpay in items in exchange of having to resell the item.

In unusual trading, the higher the tier of the hat, the more the amount of overpay is needed. Overpay of items can be from 1 key more to a few earbuds depending on the tier of the hat.

Because of this, you can profit alot from this.

Pricing websites and their mecahincs

Pricing websites are just rought estimations of values items. The price of items is moderated by the moderator of the website. Do not use pricing websites like a bible. Most of the time the pricing on items, espically on unusuals or low crafts are lower or higher than the listed price in pricing websites

General trading information

1.Paints that are painted on items will lose 50% of the paints value but promos like bills will not be affected much by this
2.Clean dropped items are worth more then crafted items because they do not have a craft number tag
3.Duped hats for unusuals and low crafts are worth lesser then its original price to most traders
4.Gifted items are worth 50% of their original price but it could be worth more then 100% its original price if it is gifted by someone famous like Notch or if the item is a very valuable item like a god tier unusual

Target Audience

When you sell or buy an item and looking to resell it, think about what type of people who would be interested in your item. Knowing this is crucial so that you will have a rough estimate of the number of potential buyers in the market and therefore would lead you to know how long it will take to sell an item and think whether if its a worthy item for you to invest in.

Example: You bought a burning team captain and you are looking to resell it. After that think of the number of people who have more then 100 earbuds. Then let say there are 1000 people whose have 100 earbuds or more, you take that number and put it over a 100 000 people you would get only 1% of all the people in tf2 being interested in your item.

Negotiation

What is negotiation? Well negotiation is bargaining how much to he or she will pay for an item below the asking price. In some cases negotiation can benefit both parties. Negotiation is one of the basic foundations of trading. Negotiation is done by every type of trader whether if its high tier trading like unusuals or low tier trading like hats. The aim of negotiation is to get the best deal possible out of a trade.

Here are tips to be a good Negotiator

Be the warm and friendly guy
Every trader enjoys trading with a nice guy who is approachable,friendly and helpful. This also reflects onto society on how service give us an impression on people or restaurants by being a nice guy, you are likely to change a traders mind on a trade deal.

Sell your items at a realistic price
Sell your items at a realistic price. Do not overprice your hats or people will lose interest in the hat and therefore by overpricing your hat you are losing potential customers. Example if your item is worth 1 earbud, its okay to set the buyout to 1.33 earbuds. However you should not place the buyout of the hat at 1.66 earbuds or more.

Be prepared to lose a trade
Always have the mindset that what every good offers you get from traders, the trade might not always go through. Some good trades are lost when the buyer is

1. An asshat who suddenly changes his mind and ask you to add more items to the deal
2.Time difference (Different time zones between traders)
3. An asshat who suddenly retracts his offer

4.Never say 'lol'
Never say 'lol' or insult a trader if the offer is low. Instead if the guy has another valuable item in his backpack, just offer him your item for his valuable item. If he does not have any valuable item that are worth your item, just say that 'your offer is too low but I hope that you can afford it in the near future.' By doing this, it will make the trader determined to trade his hats for a better hat so that in the near future, he will be able to offer you a better offer for your hat. You should also not insult traders as they are traders behind the screen. The lower his maturity, the more a trader will feel depressed by your insult. Always remember that trading is done for fun and try not to take it seriously.

Reputation

Reputation is used to show how pleaseant a trader is. People would normal give reputation after a trade to show their trade satifactory. There are 2 types of reputation. The first is the normal trade reputation and the other is cash reputation. The normal reputation is not so important as it doesnt show how trustworthy a trader is while cash reputation is more important as either trader must give the item first or pay first which takes alot of trust, therefore making cash reputation more important. But do no be fooled as there have been many cases of trustworthy traders who scammed other traders and because of this reputation now plays a small impact on how trustworthy a person is.

Dirty items

There are 3 types of dirty items and all of these types of items are not liked by the community

1.Gifted
2.Duped
3.Uncraftable

Gifted
Gifted items are items with gift tags and thus people do not like them. There are 2 ways to acquire a gited item. One is through wraping your item using a gift wrap and unwrapping it or by getting it through secret saxton. Why do people gift wrap their items? Well most of the time its traders giving birthday presents to their friends and to show that its from them. In unusual trading, gifted items normally take 85%~50% of their usual price. There are exceptions where gifted unusuals are worth their normal price.Only is if the hat is god tier and have a god tier effect plus its 1 of 1 in existence if will take 100% of its normal price. If the gift tag is on a normal item, it will be worth abit more than usual as why would anyone want to gift wrap a normal item.

Dupe
What are duped items? Well they are items that are duplicated from their original. Steam support would restore all your items if you get hacked by they would not removed the items that the hacker had hack from your account. Example: If your Killer's Exclusive #1 got hacked, they would give you back another Killer's Exclusive #1 but would not delete the other Killer's Exclusive #1. Same goes for unusuals. And because of this, if you look through a 3rd tf2 backpack website, the 2 duped items will share the same history. A couple of years back, there was a loop hole in TF2 and you could dupe items. Valve immediately fixed the loop hole and Vac Ban those people who duped TF2 items.

Uncraftable
Uncraftable items are items which cannot be crafted. They could be acquired by buying an item from the store which becomes uncraftable. On 29 November 2012 all items bought on the store from than onwards became craftable thus making uncraftable items more wanted in the community now. There are some hats that are uncraftable even without the uncraftable tag like the tradable gibus and halloween restricted items.

Scrapbanking and its Mechanics

Scrapbanking means trading your scrap for 2 weapons. Reverse scrapbanking means trading your 2 weapons for a scrap. Scrapbanking by people to sell the weapons for 1 scrap each leaving you with a weapon profit. Some people use it to get their desired weapon to craft an item. Reverse scrapbanking helps a person to get their scraps instantly rather then taking a long time to craft all their weapons into scraps.

You can use http://scrap.tf/ , http://scrapbank.me/ to scrapbank

Steam Trading Cards and its mechanics

Steam trading cards normally go for a low price but there are ways to profit from this.

1.Selling steam trading cards in a complete set will increase its price
2. Doing 1:1 trades of steam trading cards of the same game but with the other guy adding 1 scrap more
3. Buying steam trading cards for a cheaper price than the market and selling it for a higher price

The people who would buy them would be other people who are trying to profit from you or for their badge collection.

Raffling and its mechanics

What is raffling? Well Raffling is like a lucky draw in TF2 and can be entered through TF2 raffling websites. Some TF2 raffles are free while others need you to pay in order to enter the raffle. Why do people host free raffles? There is a very small chance of winning a raffle, especially free raffles as there are probably alot of people entering the free raffle.Most of the time people do it to give back to the community for helping them reach a high level of trading. Here are some TF2 raffling websites. In some of these websites, you will need to raffle a certain value of items to be able to be eligable to certain raffles. The number of slots a raffle can have depends on the person who is raffling his items away. It can be as few as 5 all the way to as high as a few thousand slots. People who do raffles which you have to pay are normally profiting from you. Example: They could do a raffle of a craft hat with a value of 1.33 refined metal and have the number of slots to be 10 with the entry fee per slot to be 2 scraps thus profiting 8 scraps from this raffle.

SteamGifts
TF2 Raffle House
Lucky.tf

Types of crates

There are 3 types of TF2 crates
1.Normal crate
2.Salvage crate
3.Crates that will expire

The normal crate is dropped randomly and is worth around 1/4 a weapon.

The salvage crate has a significantly lower drop rate than the normal crate thus making it worth alot more than normal crates therefore making it worth a few keys

Crates that will expire are also dropped randomly in a time frame but after that time frame it will disappear from your inventory if you launch TF2. To keep these crates, you got to store in in a alternate account and with that account, never ever launch TF2 if not all the crates there will disappear. These crates are also collected by crate collectors. The older the expired crate is, the more value it has

The salvage crate and the normal crate uses the mann.co store key to be uncrated while crates that will expire need special keys to be opened. These special keys will be available when the crate is released on a special occasion. Do note that using a self-made key would not increase your chances of getting an unusual.

List of TF2 crates - http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Mann_Co._Supply_Crate

Should I uncrate crates?
No you shouldn't unless you are feeling extremely lucky then yeah. There have been many cases where people uncrate hundreds of crates and still have not uncrated an unusual while they have also been many cases where people uncrate their first unusual with their first uncrate. Thus when you uncrate a crate you are losing profit if you do not uncrate an unusual therefore making uncrating unprofitable. The chance of getting an unusual is 1%.

Well if you want to try your luck, you should try the uncrating simulator first http://www.kongregate.com/games/stripedy...-crate-sim

Collectable level guide

Here are some popular levels 1,13,42,69,99,100. Only lv 0 items can be found on vintage hats/weapons

Craftable hats
Lv1,13,42,69,99 adds 0.33ref~0.66ref on top of the hats normal price
Lv100 adds 0.33ref-1ref on top of the hats normal price

Weapons
Lv1,13,42,69,99,100 are worth 0.11ref~0.33ref

Vintage hats
Lv1,13,42,69,99 are worth 2-6keys on top of the hats price
Lv100 hats are worth 6keys-1bud
Lv0 Hats are worth 10~1buds+sweets

Vintage weapons
Lv1,13,42,69,99 are worth 1~5keys
Lv100 are worth 6~12keys
Lv0 are worth 8keys~15keys

<#100 Craft business guide

Try not to touch these items as valve constantly adds alot of new # every major update thus bringing down the value of these items.

Do note that price of # items depends on buyer and seller

There are a few items that do not follow this item pricing at all and are called premium crafts.

Premium crafts are items that came out before the Pyromania update

If you are looking to profit from low craft items, get the 1st generation items as they are very stable unlike the newer craft items

Annoying things to do in trading

1. TYPING ALL IN CAPS LOCK
2. Typing o n e w ord a n s w e r
3. Taking a long time to response in trading
4. Begging for items

Guide for unusuals

Unusuals are one of the most profitable items in TF2. You can profit from a key~a few earbuds in just 1 trade. The amount you profit depends on the tier of your unusual. The higher the tier the more profit you will get. You can also lose a few keys~ a few earbuds if you do not do enough research.

Unusual tiers
There are 5 tiers of unusuals

Cancer tier
Low tier
Medium tier
High tier
God tier

The factors that affect the tier of unusuals are
Class specification of the hat
Effect of the hat
Looks of the hat
Rarity of the hat
Whether the hat is clean or dirty

Tier of class specification of the hat from the well liked class hats to the less well liked class hats

1.All class
2.Soldier
3.Scout
4.Demoman
5.Medic
6.Sniper
7.Pyro
8.Spy
9.Engineer
10.Heavy

So how do I research on the prices of unusual hats?
To be able to get an accurate price on a price of a hat, you got to look at the buyout of the hat and the offers the hat have received. By looking at the offers, you will know what people are willing to pay for a particular unusual hat so you take the average of the offers and that will be your price. Buyouts are normally set more than what they are worth so you should subtract a few keys~a few earbuds off the buyout than you will get an estimate of the value of the hat. You should also get people's opinion on a price of a hat so you would get a rough estimate of the price.

How do I get good offers on my unusuals?

1. Avoid
Avoid new effects or new hats bacause most traders are weary of buying it as the price is unstable.

Avoid heavy , engineer and cancer hats as these hats would give you a very hard time to sell them away

2. Look
Try to focus on getting soldier,scout and all class hats as they are generally easier to sell.
1st generation effects are also generally well liked by the community

3. Initiative
You will have a higher chance of getting better trades if you offer your unusual on people's trade rather than waiting for people to offer on your unusual

4. Pure is Gold.
Keys and Earbuds should be your main piority as after trading your unsuaul for pure, you can use it to buy quicksell unusuals

Screenshots and their mechaincs

Why do people want screenshots of your hat? Well screenshots will tell you how a hat looks like. It is best if you have a screenshot of your unusual in your unusual trades as it would tell potential buyers how well your hat fits with the effect thus people would offer how much they would pay for your hat.
There are 2 types of screenshot
1. In game screenshot
2. Source Film Maker(SFM)

Screenshots from SFM makes unusual hat looks much more appealing then in game screenshots. But you will need interest and time to learn how to make screenshots from SFM.

Some SFM services are free while others you will need to pay for their services.

Example of a source filmaker screenshot - http://i.minus.com/jb1WeIPm7fKTw0.jpg
Example of a In game screen shot - http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/921273104829103537/B3A4A5CA10AEB1D866462A52B4F670069C1B51AC/

Guide to Paypal trading

1. Check If the Person Is a Scammer on SteamRep.

SteamRep is a very useful site to use when wanting to know more about the person you are trading with. SteamRep is essentially a backround check for all members of the steam community.

2. Use a Middleman!

A middleman takes both items of the trade to make sure they are sent, when he/she confirms the payment and item are sent, he/she sends each person their part of the trade. This protects you from the "I gave the item to the buyer, but he didn't pay" and "I paid the seller, but he didn't give me the item" scams. Be sure you use someone trustworthy, such as a SteamRep Middleman[steamrep.com], a SourceOP Trusted Seller[forums.sourceop.com] or a UTC Admin.

3. Paypal Trading is Dangerous.

aypal trading is extremely dangerous, and there is a high risk of being scammed. This is why you must be 100% confident in your buyer/seller and middleman. Many scams involving paypal happen daily, the most common of these is chargeback scams.

4. If you are Selling, Try Using Moneypak[www.moneypak.com] as an Alternative to Paypal.

If you are concerned about chargebacks. Moneypak is just a cash gift card. They are readily available at major shopping centers like Wal-Mart, KMart, Wallgreens pharmacies, and even 7-Eleven. The store charges $5 per card, so you will need to discuss who will be paying that fee. The buyer gives you the number on the card and you simply deposit the money from it into your Paypal account. How does this protect you? Well, very simply, the store selling the Moneypak card is the one taking the risk, not you. If the buyer claims unauthorized usage of their credit card, the store gets charged back, not you. You can think of it like the buyer paying for cash back at the grocery store with their credit card and then giving that cash to you. Now, while this completely protects the seller, this puts more burden on the buyer; it takes time to go to the store to get one, and they have to worry about the seller claiming the card "didn't work" even if they took the money off it.

5. Evaluate the Person you are Trading With.

a) Do not trade with people who have private profiles or private BPs.
b) Do not trade with people who do not have a history of paypal trading
c) Prefer users with a reputable steam account
-- Has been around at least a year.
-- Has lots of games on the account.
-- Has played those games for lots of hours (especially TF2).
d) Prefer users who have incentive to protect their reputation. E.g.
-- Are they well-known in the community?
-- Are they admin on a reputable server?
-- Are they a SourceOP Trusted Seller?
e) Consider calling them over the phone, or via other forms of personal contact.
f) See if they are friends with trusted community members. If so, ask these trusted people if they can vouch for the person.


6. As a Seller, Prefer Smaller Payments From Multiple People .

a) Sell your Sunbeams Killer's Kabuto for 7 max heads, rather than for $700.
b) Sell your 7 max heads to 7 different people, not all to the same person.

7. If It's too Good to Be True, It Probably Is.

If you want to sell your unusual for 50 dollars, and someone offers you 100, they are most likely a scammer. Always excersice caution when dealing with trades that are massive overpays.

8. For Paypal, Make Sure the Funds are Sent as a Gift.

To prevent "item not received" claims. To check, in Paypal click "details" and look at the transaction's payment type. It will say "instant" if it was gifted. Also, to prevent chargeback scams, make sure the buyer inserts: "Funds for virtual items, will not be chargebacked" or something along those lines, this will prevent the buyer from charging back.

9. For Paypal, Write Down the Buyer/Sellers Steam ID.

Save your buyer/sellers steam ID somewhere for future reference. In case he chargebacks or performs some sort of scam, you can easily get him banned. To find out a person's steam ID, just get his steam profile link as shown in Mr. Rager's guide and enter it in steam. It will instantly show you the person's Steam ID in the information.

10. If you are Scammed, There is Really Nothing you can Do.

There is really nothing you can do in paypal scams, while it certainly doesn't hurt to show the evidence you have, the bank/cc company does not recognize any form of proof other than a shipping tracking number. It doesn't matter whether you use Paypal, Moneybookers, etc, they're all just in-betweens for the bank/CC company. When an unauthorized report comes directly from a person to the bank/CC company, they debit paypal, and that money has to come from somewhere paypal can't eat it. Sorry.

11. Beware of Impersonators!

Many people impersonate trusted buyers/sellers or middlemen to scam unusuals. The best way to prevent impersonators is by comparing the person's steam profile ID to the actual buyer/seller/middleman.

How to find a trusted middleman

Many trades in TF2 may include real-world money, which makes things tricky. How can you be sure that the money will be paid, or the hat will be given afterwards? That, my friends, is why there are middlemen.

Who can I use as a middleman?

SourceOP has a trusted middleman list, so any of those guys will be very safe to use, the link below
http://www.sourceop.com/modules.php?name...ic&t=77127

Also, any of the UTC, or Unusual Trade community administrators would also be great choices.
http://unusualtradingcommunity.com/

When you search for a worthy middleman, be sure to add them through the websites, as there are a plethora of imposter middlemen. If the other player brings in a 'trusted middleman', copy their steam url into steamrep
http://steamrep.com/
To make sure that the middleman is legit.

Valve Anti-Cheat system (VAC)

It is used by Valve to ban people from entering Valve official servers. How do you get banned? Well to get VAC Banned any third-party modification to a game designed to give one player an advantage over another is classified as a cheat or hack and will trigger a VAC ban. This includes modifications to a game's core executable files and dynamic link libraries

TF2 Links

Trading websites
- TF2 Outpost[www.tf2outpost.com]
- TF2 Trading Post[tf2tp.com]
- http://bazaar.tf/

Reference to pricing of unusual hats
- TF2 Price Check[www.tf2pricecheck.net]
- http://backpack.tf/

Scrapbanking websites
- http://scrap.tf/
- http://scrapbank.me/

Backpack websites
- TF2B
- TF2 Items[www.tf2items.com]
- http://backpack.tf/
- OPTF2[optf2.com]

Raffling websites
- SteamGifts[www.steamgifts.com]
- TF2 Raffle House[tf2r.com]
- http://lucky.tf/#

Collector list
- TF2 Price Check Collector's list[www.tf2pricecheck.net]
- http://collector.tf

TF2 Trading Advice
- TF2 Pricecheck Trade Advice Thread[www.tf2pricecheck.net]

Thanks for reading my guide

I hope this guide has been useful to you and all the best in your trading

Feel free to add me on Steam if you have any questions or if you think that i have any information that i missed out on.

All resources belongs to their respective owners

Resources i took these information from
http://www.tf2pricecheck.net/Thread-GUID...em-Quality
http://www.tf2pricecheck.net/Thread-GUID...v%E2%88%9E
http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/a-gui...ely.16018/
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_arti...-Radz-6869
http://www.tf2pricecheck.net/Thread-GUID...hread-v1-1

[PluasmRiderOP9]

wonder effort glad to see a trading guide with alot of information with plenty of links to refer to

[Uncle Vernon]

Excellent guide, I appreciate the effort that must have went into this. Liking and favouriting, will refer to this later.

[Hardbash]

Favoriting so I can read another time.
Really nice guide, man. It was FUN to read. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!
@basticle It took me a good 20 minutes cuz I wanted to be thorough. (may be exaggeration)

[Pots]

stop hacking :>

[Sediment Enthusiast]

only took me 2 minuts to read lol

[Schrodinger's Drip]

thx for the info

[RAKSA]

shark week and haunnukah meet to make trades

[DavidDraper]

Thanks!

[Ranger]

I will read this later

[Pots]

i see thx for the heads up