r/cheapcsgotrading • u/Komatoz • May 23 '16
[Guide] How to price stickered guns accordingly!
Edit: Feb, 7, 2021.
Please stop DMing and chatting me to get price checks.
I literally get tens of messages about this every week for the past 5 or so years.
I do NOT do private/personal price checks anymore. I had already stated on this post for a year, at the top right here.
But everyone still ignores that portion ALL the time, and I still get messages almost daily. A sticker price guide is a guide, it is to help you guys learn to price them yourself. A guide post is not a shortcut/cheat to be like "hey, I won't read any of this and just message the gal who made the post". About 80% of the people who messaged me from finding my guide literally has replied that they did not read my guide...
Please read the guide. It is old but I promise it at least helps you get an idea of how stickered gun pricing works.
Anyways, me not doing PCs anymore is not personal, I just can't do them anymore due to time and real life obligations limiting my Reddit use. So any messages/chats from this point on, asking questions about the value of their skins and etc will be ignored. I will not respond to PC messages and chats anymore
I hope you guys understand. Thanks, sorry guys.
If you are in need of help, please make a PC post here or on /r/GlobalOffensiveTrade to get suggestions/answers from the community.
Edit: May 30, 2021.
This guide is old but still valid.
But, if you have questions about pricing your own skin, please make a post on this sub or on /r/GlobalOffensiveTrade and/or do your own due diligence since this information is still valid.
I want to help everyone, I truly do, but it gets overwhelming when years later people still keep messaging me, asking me to price check their skins, almost every day for the past few years...
There is a lot of info out there. Please at least try to do your own due diligence or make an effort to ask subs for a PC. I don't give personal PC anymore because I can't keep up with all of the DMs and chat messages requesting for one. Sorry.
Thanks guys.
Updated (June 21, 2016):
Added detailed information on multiple stickers/special cases
Still working on getting more screenshots and making visual references to help.
Cleaned up the formatting a little and fixed some of the gramatical typos I found.
I am planning to add a section on HOW to find prices/values of rare stickers.
After seeing many posts with the same PC requests of stickered guns as well as posts with overpriced stickered skin prices, I decided to make this somewhat quick guide on how to value guns with stickers on them.
I apologize beforehand for any spelling and gramatical errors
If you have a stickered gun and you are not too sure how much they are valued at, please be sure to read through this guide first before posting.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to be any expert in the world of stickered guns, this is just the general information that the majority of experienced stickered skin traders go by, that I have come across, as well as my experience.
If you have any suggestions to add to this guide then please comment below. But please make sure it is solid information.
Lets start with the basics
First you must figure out your skin's value.
This is something that pretty most people know how to do but there are a few who are unsure.
For lower tier skins (low value skins) you can just go with the Steam Community Market.
For skins worth $20+ please use https://csgoanalyst.com for the 7-Day Average market prices. This also goes for any skin with prices that fluctuate A LOT on the Community market.
Please DO NOT use OPSkins or any other sale site they will almost always have a lower/different prices compared to other sites because they deal with actual money, not in trades. Because of this, it is a unreliable source for pricing your skins accordingly.
Stickers
There are many stickers with different popularity/rarity/value. These all usually contribute to how they are valued when they are on a skin.
1. Finding their value
This is basically the same as skins. Try to use https://csgoanalyst.com for stickers valued at $15+ because market tends to fluctuate.
2. Finding their tier/popularity/rarity
Now, this is the part that people seem to easily get confused about often. Most inexperienced people tend to assume that most stickers are worth a lot, especially team/tourney stickers. However this is not always true.
I will list a few stickers that pop-up often in trades that are considered high-med tier (depending on the sticker).
Click the links to see the stickers
Howling Dawn - This is by far the most expensive sticker out there because there is no real set price on these due to their rare and discontinued nature.
Katowice 2014 IBuyPower Holo & Titan Holo - These are valued highly despite being somewhat easy to find on Reddit trade subs. One main reason is due to their popularity.
Katowice 2014 IBuyPower & Titans stickers - These tend to not be AS highly valued compared to their Holo counterparts, but they are just as popular.
Crown (foils) - This is another extremely popular yet pricey sticker due to their uncommon nature.
Rest of the Katowice 2014 stickers including holos - This picture does not show ALL the katowice 2014 stickers but you get the idea. These are the most highly valued and sought after in terms of TEAM / TOURNEY stickers.
Please keep in mind that these are not the only highly valued stickers out there. Just simply some of the most common ones.
There are other stickers as well that are valued just as highly despite not being nearly as common, such as The Headhunter (foil) sticker and the Flammable (foil).
Then there are the lower tier stickers which do not add much value to skins due their common and cheap nature.
Some examples of these stickers are the following:
Aces High sticker, The Headshot Guarantee sticker, or the Hamster Hawk sticker.
When stickers are low tier they are valued at little to nothing.
Some experienced traders won't even bother adding their small values to the skin prices when trading/selling.
So how do you value a stickered skin?
This is an extremely tricky subject because it depends on multiple factors.
Skin
Sticker
Placement of sticker
These are just the primary factors and I will try my best to explain each one.
But first, the general sticker rule.
When it comes to stickered skins, everyone always tends to throw around the "10%" rule.
I am also guilty of doing this whenever I am lazy or am too busy to explain more in depth.
However, the 10% rule is just a guideline, it is NOT set in stone. This is because the stickers can GENERALLY be valued at 10% but it can be anywhere from 3% to 10% depending on the 3 factors listed above.
Before we move on, I apologize for the example photos. I recently cleared out most of my kato14 inventory so it was difficult to find good examples
So first, the skins.
Now obvious higher tiered skins are going to be worth a lot because they are either popular skins or expensive skins.
Once you put an expensive sticker on there, it would become much more tempting for others to trade for it. Such as this M4A1-S Hot Rod FN with 4 Katowice 2014 stickers (3 are holos).
However if you have a low tiered skin and put on expensive stickers on there, well...the level of appeal isn't going to go very high. For example this infamous P250 Sand Dune with 4 Kato14 IBP holos.
So try to keep your skin's value in mind when doing these stickered skin values.
Next are the stickers
We roughly went over this in the sticker section of the post and I don't want to repeat myself. So, in short.
The more cheaper and common the stickers are, the more value they lose once on a skin.
The more expensive and popular the stickers are, the more value they gain once on a skin (Up to 10% - depending on the sticker)
Finally, placement
Some people actually don't care about the placements of the stickers but there is a larger number of people who do care.
When it comes to lower tiered stickers, the placement of the stickers will generally not matter as much.
But for higher tiered or rare stickers placements matters very much!
Of course not everyone is going to agree on which placements are the best for X sticker on X skin, but there are the most popular placements which are usually considered to be the "best spots".
For example, an AWP's "best" placement tends to be either on the scope or on the body, right on top of the mag
Not everyone may agree with this, but it is what it is. That means an AWP with the stickers on the scope or on top of the mag would be valued more highly.
Another example is the AK-47. This skin is THE most common when it comes to Kato14 stickers. Especially IBP and Titans because of their colors.
When the sticker is NOT placed on the wood like this IBP kato14 then it won't be valued as highly as this one with the Titan kato14 on the wood.
(Sorry for the bad screenshots of my guns D:)
So placement can be tricky but the general rule is (this part will be WIP since I am only experienced with rifles and awps):
AK-47s = Wood
Most rifles are = Body above mag
AWPs = Scope or Above mag
If anyone knows what the "best" placement for other skins are, please let me know in the comments
Settling on a fair value
Keep in mind all of the factors and try to price your skin accordingly.
Basic rule is 3%~10%.
The most common pricing is 7-10% for majority of high-med tier skins and 5-10% for lower tiered skins.
For the extremely expensive and very rare stickers such as HD, Kato14 IBP holo, & Kato14 Titan holo. They are actually valued at 3-5% because of their extremely high price.
Exceptions and Special Cases
I had forgotten about certain things while making this guide so after some suggestions from reputable/experienced traders as well as some researching (on topics I am not experienced in) I have put together a few notes for this area.
However, I will repeat what I always say once again.
Sticker pricing is extremely subjective and can change on a case by case scenario.
SCRATCHED STICKERS
This is a very uncommon/rare occurance but it still happens. When stickers get scratched obviously they will not hold their full used value.
From what I could gather, if the sticker is scratched once, it may or may not still hold their full value depending on the skin, sticker, and how the scratch looks.
I do not have photo examples nor any decent example explanations but I will work on putting some together ASAP.
Two Faced Stickers
This may not be what it's actually called...but it was what I always called them.
These are stickers that show one thing, but when scratched to the max (before sticker removal) they show a different thing.
Some of these stickers are the T-Reked and Welcome to the Clutch (There was 1 or 2 more, I cant recall which they are, does anyone know?)
These stickers are not as common as most other stickers nor as sought after but they are still very tricky to price.
Because they have the potential to show 2 different things, most people tend to price the original unscratched version a tad bit higher than the scratched 2nd face version.
More detailed info will be added when I find examples
MULTIPLE STICKERS
Generally most stickers will not add any extra combined value even if a skin is maxed out on stickers, however there are quite a few exceptions.
This part is for EXTREMELY special cases only. DO NOT apply this pricing factor just to get more value out of mediocre or low value skins simply because they have the stickers mention in this section. THESE ARE ONLY FOR CERTAIN SITUATIONS.
Majority of these exceptions are with the higher tiered Kato'14 stickers, the Howling Dawn sticker, the Crown (foil) stickers, and popular playskin stickers that are often in demand.
One good thing about having lots of stickers on a gun is that, depending on what the stickers are, they CAN be worth more than 10% total value, even going up to 50% or 60% of sticker price.
How this works is if you have a higher-top tier skin with multiples of expensive stickers.
For example:
An AWP/AK Redline with FOUR(4) IBuyPower (HOLO) Katowice 2014 stickers.
Or something like an AWP Asiimov with 4 crown foils.
Or a M4A1-S Icarus Fell with 4 Chi-Bombs can fetch more value than a simple 10% sticker value.
GENERALLY this >10% rule tends to occur only on higher priced skins with higher priced stickers. BUT they can also work with stickers that are a bit cheaper on middle tier skins. For example, 4 doge stickers on a redline or awp boom tends to fetch a bit more as well.
However, the reason why this is an EXTREMELY tricky pricing method for only certain cases is because of many reasons.
Not everyone knows that these sorts of situations will raise a sticker's value to be over 10% so they will assume the seller is "dumb".
If new and inexperienced traders see this sort of pricing method, they may choose to neglect their real value to try and get more value out of skins that should not be priced higher than 10%.
It tends to be very dependant on tastes/preferences/opinions. (Not everyone will agree that a certain sticker/skin combination is best)
