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Basic Guide to Case Hardened Valuing

By aaty

This is a guide for the beginner-intermediate Case hardened trader.
It will explain patterns, average price and some ideas and concepts useful for trading Case Hardened items.

https://discord.gg/ZMRvUmU <-- 20K User Trading Discord

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Created by

aaty
Offline

Languages: English

Category: Getting Started

Equipment: Knives, Pistols, Rifles

Posted

Updated

Feb 8, 2015 @ 1:24pm

Aug 4, 2017 @ 3:11am

40,845	Unique Visitors
260	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Intro to the Guide itself

Basics

Blue and Value

Position of Blue and Patterns

Screenshots and Price Checks

Notices and Upcoming Adds

Comments

Intro to the Guide itself

Edit *4* notes, 08/02/2015

WARNING

This guide is a guide only and is not an accurate representation of all opinions by all traders. The main purpose of this guide is as a basic teaching source for dealing with Case Hardened items.

If you're interested in peer to peer cross-game trading or cashout, use

Trade Central Discord: https://discord.gg/jDTS6MK
20K Users and counting - middleman service and integrated wallet system.

CH items are some of the most touchy subjects among traders. Not only is it hard to evaluate a "true" price for them, but it is and will always will be a buyers market - meaning the price of the item will be set by the highest bidder.
This guide I have been working on (a work in progress) is meant to be advice and advice only on how much your CH is worth. It is NOT 100% accurate, and it is what I like to think is an AVERAGE of peoples opinions.
I am open to suggestions and ways to improve this guide to be more useful, and I am open to suggestions and ideas as well as corrections of prices. I am currently looking for example knives, and if anyone has/knows of example knives, I would appreciate an HD screenshot or a link to it :)

Basics

CH can be split into knives, and weapons:

Knives:

Karambit
M9 Bayonet
Bayonet
Butterfly
Huntsman
Gut
Flip
Falchion

Weapons (coming up future updates):

AK-47
Five-Seven

From here you can split into the four types of color, and their respective rarities:

Blue - most rare
Purple - uncommon (in large amounts)
Gold - standard/uncommon
Silver - common
"Rust" - common (as condition increases, BS>FN, the amount of rust decreases, and the overall color of the blade increases from dirty dark to bright blue. There are some knives however, that maintain the dark patches regardless of wear.

The case hardened pattern is pre-set and thus many knives can be opened containing the same pattern, identical or different wear, but different float value. The pattern, as far as im aware is shown in this picture here[gyazo.com].

Knives with identical wear, pattern and float value are what we call "dupes" and usually at high tier blue have lowered value. This occurs when a scam goes through and the victim reclaims items from Valve, which they reimburse fully on a single occasion, thus creating a new knife/stolen items.

Whilst purple, gold and silver have more or less "set" colours, blue tends to have dark and light patches, which can be called "sky blue", "ocean blue" and "ice blue". This is little difference in value among these, however, price does tend like so: Ocean<Ice<Sky.
Blue also comes in patterns, the two main patterns are solid blue and blaze blue. Solid is worth more in general ~25% more than blaze. It should be noted when people refer to "blaze" they sometimes mean it as the descriptive word for fire and therefore the knife has potentially no blue, or solid blue in a fire pattern. It is my belief that blaze should only be used to describe broken up blue, but then again, this is nothing but my opinion.

It should be noted that backside of a knife, is NOT worth much. (For ft karambits) >75% is worth only 5-20K, 80% solid is up to +20K, 90% is +30K, 100% is +50K. These prices increase however, if the playside is also good, as a double sided knife is more desirable.
It is worth noting that the value of blue generally increases exponentially, the graph looks like a y=e^x, sorry to get technical.

Blue and Value

WARNING This is an AVERAGE GUIDE please remember!

Standard (marketprice) - 5-10% Blue
Common (market + 5%) - 10-15% Blue
Uncommon (market + 10-50%) - 15-30% Blue
Rare (market + 50-250%) - 30-50% Blue beginning to get hard to tell price...

There is a break between these tiers of rarity. As soon as you start to move past 50% blue, you begin to move into the unknown. It is both incredibly hard to price accurately, and frustrating to sell at times.

Extraordinary (Starting at ~100K - 500K) - 50-90% Blue huge 400K gap here, it depends largely on pattern and position, as well as type of knife, these are the hardest to price and should be treated with caution.
Collectors (set by owner likely ~600-1500K) - 90-100% Blue As a general rule, Karambits and M9s are the only two to breach 1000K, there are some Bayonets, but not many, they are generally 600-800 at 90-100% blue.

These percentages differ slightly depending on the knife, the order of desirability in knives is: Flip<Gut<Huntsman<Butterfly<Bayonet<M9 Bayonet<Karambit.
There are 7 types of knives, for each of these, starting from flip, the more blue, the higher the increase in price per % of blue.

Position of Blue and Patterns

The position of solid patches, and blaze changes value a little. the value of position of blue generally increases like so: Middle<Handle<Tip.
If the tip or the handle has solid to the very end, then it is worth more yet.

Names and showcase of patterns:

Solid:

Skyblue [gyazo.com]
Ocean [gyazo.com]
Ice [gyazo.com]

Others:

Blaze [gyazo.com]
Ice Handle [gyazo.com]
Flame [gyazo.com]
Solid Tip[gyazo.com]
Dragon Claw[gyazo.com]
Full color - no silver, no rust [gyazo.com]
Tiger Stripes [gyazo.com]
Blue stripes with mostly gold inlay, sometimes silver is alright) Blue Inlay/Handle
Searched for a screen for an hour, hard to find... Essentially its the two stripes of the bfly knife when the hand hold it. Blue inlay/(handle) Searching for screen!
Blue Ring [gyazo.com]
Blue teeth/spine[gyazo.com]

Screenshots and Price Checks

On the topic of price checks, two of the main price checkers for Reddit (2013), namely Elowyn and Grewen are on semi-permanent vacation - each have their separate reasons.
I do not claim to be the most accurate nor consistant at PCing. But I can do it with the right screenshots and information. The number one rule of price checks is that they are a GUIDELINE, and only a GUIDELINE.
The true value is sometimes more, and sometimes less than what the PCer says, especially if they are in a rush/tired etc. They are not to be regarded as law. It is sensible to use them, but certainly, if you are not receiving offers in the region they have set, clearly it is high. Likewise, if you are getting high offers, it is sensible to raise the b/o. the person in possession of the knife has the right to do whatever the hell they want with it. Actually selling at a ridiculous price will of course take forever. Likewise selling low is a technical loss of money. Having the PC allows you to work around a sensible price to gain the most out of a trade in a sensible time. After all, trading works around £-$-K/Time, having a high money/time ratio is key to good trading.

I am able to price check below, provided decent quality screenshots are sent, via steam, gyazo, or imgur I will refuse to open certain programs for various reasons. Both a shot outside in sun, out of sun, and one inside are necessary to increase the accuracy of the PC, inspect pictures are also useful. however, for a rough pc, a single shot is more than enough. If you specifically want a detailed analysis, tell me. I am unable to do histogram checks currently, if you wish for one ask Reddit. Likewise if you wish for a blurred slow motion shot, ask Reddit. Click for a nice example of SS here [gyazo.com]

Console commands to use for nice screens include:

viewmodel_fov 45 (45-55 is decent and brings the knife "closer".
cl_draw_only_deathnotices 1 (removes HUD).
host_timescale 0.025 (normal is 1, 0.01 to 0.03 is useful) this slows down time, and allows you to take mid-swing screens for showcase pictures.

I personally take about 4-5 screenshots on high settings on a favoured map, usually office or nuke out of favouritism, and show these on Lounge or Reddit when trading, if you are asking below, I would request at least two, ideally 4+, one outside (not blindingly bright) and one inside, where blue can be clearly seen. Inspect pictures again, are also useful.

This thread is mainly for CH, but I am able to price most other knives. If you want a more useful comprehensive price list covering high tier knives, use Elowyn's list and his links found here .
His list is no longer active, however, reddit houses several other useful guides, searching there will land you with one or two active price lists. Also note that xcsgo[xcsgo.com] (the site) has some guidance on top tier blue items. it is not however, maintained by an actual person regularly, and some prices are way off.

I hope this guide is of some use to you, if you feel like donating or because this helps you, you can do do by clicking right here , price checks and advice are free of course, but I will do them in my own time, at my own pace, so please be patient :)

Since my friends list is mostly full, I may not accept friend requests, if so please leave a comment below or on my profile page and I will make time and space to talk.

Good luck trading!

Notices and Upcoming Adds

Note, I am not currently trading as often or as in depth as I used to be, for this reason, the extended version of this guide is delayed indefinitely. A rating/favorite would help with some motivation so I know people are actually using this somewhat, popularity has bloomed recently, but this guide still only really numbers in the dozens of users per week, not hundreds, so I am not particularly interested in keeping it up to date and putting effort into the upkeep of it.
23/01/2016 - beginning to think about changing and improving parts of the guide, doing some work now and will think about adding a ak/5-7 or settling price section in the next few weeks. Have updated some sections, fixed a few mistakes and added a few more pictures to the mix.
Future updates to contain AK and 5-7 pricing, full gold/silver patterns.
Still looking for better pictures :D especially for blaze :L
SETTLING VALUE - and why its important to use along with a b/o.

[/strike]

I've been inactive in CS:GO Trading for over a year and I'm not fit to PC. Don't ask me. The guide will stay as it is since I no longer am current for prices and new items.

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