Counter-Strike Pins: The Ultimate Guide!

This guide is meant to give an in-depth overview of all official Counter-Strike Pins!
UPDATE: Valve has teased new Pins on Twitter!!

General Overview

From Skins to Sprays: Counter-Strike has a long history with customization options ever since the original CS launched in 2000.
15 years later, a completely new way to customize your ingame Profile has been added to CSGO: Pins! Here's what you should know about them.

First of all, there are 2 types of Pins available: Genuine and normal ones. Normal Pins are very easy to obain because you can just unbox them from these Capsules, which can be bought from In-game offers or the Community Market. They contain Pins that can be sold on the market at any time, and become tradable one week after purchasing.

Genuine Pins on the other hand are quite difficult to get. The only "official" way was to buy them online from the Valve Store or by attending a Major, where they usually cost about $20 per pack. At some events you would even get one free pin per Ticket!
But Valve has stopped selling Pins (online and offline) after the Starladder Berlin Major in 2019!!!
That means that currently there is no way to get Pins besides buying them from other people. Be aware of Scammers and never trust strangers without doing proper research!
Once you redeem their code, genuine Pins can no longer be sold or traded and will remain in your inventory forever.

For this reason they are very desired amongst the community, since not many people have them due to their exclusive nature. Opening them is like a real life Case-Unboxing because you never know which Pin you are going to get, and just like skins, they come in various different colours which determine their rarity.

Click HERE to redeem your genuine Pin Code and add it to your Inventory!

Only a very small fraction of the CS Community, some Pros and even a few Casters have them, which makes owning one a pretty cool thing for sure.

Series 1 Analysis

Are you heading to Poland for ESL One Katowice 2015? Attendees will have an opportunity to purchase collectible CS:GO pins, each of which come with a virtual version you can show off on your CS:GO profile and in the scoreboard. They will be available on-site at the Katowice event, so trade your pins with other attendees and collect all eleven!

• Official CS:GO-Blog on March 6th, 2015

Common Pins

The 4 Common Pins in Series 1 are Nuke, Train, Guardian and Tactics. Eventhough they technically are the lowset rarity of all the pins, they are very popular since they are relatively cheap to get and look decent.

Uncommon Pins

There are 3 Pins in the Uncommon Rarity. Unfortunatly though, only one of them -the Victory Pin- is valuable since the other two have neither good looks, nor do the maps they represent increase their value.

Rare Pins

These two Rare Pins represent two very popular CS Maps: Mirage and Inferno. They both display iconic features of their maps, being Mirages three Towers and the noisy Bell on Inferno.

Very Rare Pins

Obviously, the 2 Very Rare Pins are the most rare, desireable and expensive pins from this series. Both have very simple, yet epic designs.

Series 2 Analysis

For the first time, Pins based on Operations are now available with Series 2! Their motives are the Phoenix, Bravo and Bloodhound logos. I personally think that a Golden/Silver Operation Coin is always preferable over an Opertion Pin because they are much more exclusive. Remember: You can no longer upgrade Coins, but you can always buy Pins! Only get them if you're a big fan of their look and missed those Operations back in 2014/15!

We also get the second Variant of the Guardian Pin, but it's just a recolour of the original one. Only buy this one if you prefer orange over blue :)

The remaining Pins are for fan-favourite Maps plus Baggage and Office.
The latter ones are not popular at all (sorry Office Globals!), but Cache, Cobblestone and Overpass are amazing. Almost everybody loves those Maps, and the unique Shape of Cache and Cobble makes them even better!

Finally we get 2 new Very Rare Pins. The Chroma Pin has the sad honour of being the cheapest Pin in this category. It looks nice, but not good enough for someting so rare. The Valeria Pin on the other hand is the total opposite: It's one of the most popular and expensive Pins that exist!

Series 3

Update 1.36.1.6 (released 11/29/2017) added the following Pins to the Game Files:

• Guardian 3 Pin
  
• Canals Pin
  
• Welcome to the Clutch Pin
  
• Death Sentence Pin
  
• Inferno 2 Pin
  
• Wildfire Pin
  
• Easy Peasy Pin
  
• Aces High Pin
  
• Hydra Pin
  
• Brigadier General Pin
  
• Howl Pin

And here's what they all look like:

Series 4

Dataminers found some Info about Series 4 with the Beta-Release of Counter Strike 2!
The new pins (from most common to rarest) should be:
-Guardian 4
-Hello AK
-Hop
-Vertigo

-Popdog
-Riptide
-Ancient

-Shattered Web
-Dust II 2

-Boss
-Anubis

Half-Life: Alyx

One day before the release of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve introduced Stickers, Patches, and Pins from the HL Series to CS:GO with Update 1.37.4.5.

If you purchased Valve Index hardware prior to Alyx’s release, you’ll receive a Genuine version of the Alyx Pin! (as well as an exclusive Music Kit)

Non-Genuine Pin Capsules (=Good investment?)

You can always purchase Pin Capsules directly from the CS2 Main Menu via the "Store" Tab.
That's why Pin-Capsules are a terrible investment: Their supply is infinite while demand is pretty low! (collectors prefer genuine ones)
People have been asking me if they should invest in Pins, so I hope this could help you :)

It is also possible to buy the Capsules or even individual Pins from the Steam Market directly!

Here are Links to the Capsules on the Steam Market:

• Series 1
  
• Series 2
  
• Series 3
  
• Half-Life: Alyx

Verdict

Pins are a unique and special way to customize your CS:GO Inventory. If you got yours directly at a Major, you probably own one of the best Souvenirs possible! But even just collecting them is a lot of fun and very addictive, General Anders agrees with me here I think :D

[𝗥𝗲𝘇𝘇𝗶𝗲]

looking to buy genuine pins (only virtual code), also selling a genuine nuke code + pin if wanted. I have one already activated

[sun]

Add me

[sun]

I have full series1+ series2 physicals

[𝓛𝓪𝔂𝓸𝓻]

Selling Serie 3 Pin unopend

[V1p0]

i have many codes&physicals, lmk

[pat]

No

[𝟮𝟯]

Do these codes ever expire :)

[❤MissPriscilla❤]

excited for vertigo

[Bruno (ง︡'-'︠)ง]

looking for a Genuine Dust II Pin with Code!

[Noan | Troll if mirage]

Nice guide! At the moment I have Brigadier Pin for sale. Trading it for skins. No code, unfortunately.