Well, maybe ‘horrible liar’ is a bit too strong for how my trading’s been going over the past few weeks since I last had a really big update about trading. For all of you, who don’t care for Mannconomics, then leave now, because we’re going to get really nerdy in the next couple minutes.
Now that we got all those peasants without hats out of here, let’s get down to business. Remember about a week or two ago when I said I was going to stop trading soon? Ha, haha hahaha.
I was lying.
When I got my new headset, something clicked to all of those people on trading servers around me. Suddenly, they all wanted my items, and no longer wanted theirs. In the last five days, I think I’ve made around 10 keys in value, which is nothing to snuff at, as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to give a breakdown on how the community is reacting in different markets, and some amazing trades that I’ve been through.
Starting out with the ‘Strange’ market, we’re seeing the rise of strange festive items. Exponentially. Turns out just about all of the major items (especially t bat, scattergun and rocket launcher) are going for at least an earbud. I can say, I never saw this coming. The crate 30 items seem to be leveling out in value, right when I buy a Strange Gunslinger, and then go sell it 1:1 for a Strange Machina, of course. In other news, the older stranges (think scattergun, rocket launcher, minigun, grenade launcher, pretty much all stock weapons) are starting to go up. Although the Pyro, Spy, and Engineer weapons haven’t started to go up just yet, I’d say it’s safe to bet that it’s only a matter of time before values start rising.
This week has also seen the impossible for promo items.
They’re dropping.
Right now, Bills are floating around 8-10 keys (some people refuse to lower those prices) and Earbuds are down to 22 keys. This may in fact be the first time in the history of Hat fortress 2 that Earbuds have dropped in price, but it doesn’t really surprise me. Max Heads are down to 2 buds, nobody seems to want the Holiday Headcase, and that’s floating somewhere between buds and max. I haven checked out the HOUWAR’s value in a while (mostly since it makes me cry every time I see how little I amount to one) but it could be that they’re dropping too. I can only hope that Unusuals start to make a comeback. Although I doubt that I’m going to sell my Orbiting Fire Texas Ten-Gallon (it’s even hotter with the brown paint I put on it) I’d like to know that if I ever feel like I need promos, they won’t cost me everything I own.
For anyone who has seen my inventory, it’s filled with around 150 weapons, 20 or so hats, 10 misc. items, metal, and many other random things since I refuse to craft items because I feel that maybe someday, I could sell my stack of 5 Southern Hospitalities. I was surprised yesterday when a guy traded me and said:
“Show me what you’ve got.”
For normal traders, this may seem not very odd, but I advertise everything in my backpack, telling potential buyers to check my backpack (by using the control prompt “!bp pirate” in the normal trade_plaza servers that I lurk in) so people come and trade me with a recognition of something they want.
This guy wanted everything.
He asked me to put up all my normal items, so I did. I filled 19 and ½ rows with 78 items, some were non-craftable, some were newer (like a phlogstinator and sticky jumper I had) and some items were un-craftable. But I had 78 unique weapons up, no repeats. And then I got that question.
“How much for all of it?”
Seeing hat I normally sell weapons for a scrap each, that puts the value of all the items at 78 scrap, more if you count individual weapons. 78 scrap equals 8.66 refined, but I figured since the rough value was really around 4.33 refined in actual weapon value I could give him a bit of a discount.
“I can sell all this to you for 3 keys, and that’s about a 20% discount off of my normal prices for weapons.”
Turns out the guy didn’t have 3 keys, only two. After a bit of bargaining, we decided that a Strange Liberty Launcher and Ellis Cap were worth roughly a key, and about 30 seconds later, I had completed the largest trade in Team Fortress 2 history.
Although I can’t back up that it was the biggest trade in the world, I certainly feel that if not, I was at least pretty close. This is the first time in roughly 3 months that my backpack’s had less than 175 items in it. I feel kind of empty on the inside. But, profit is profit. I would have ended up crafting some of those items eventually, and selling in bulk is a lot easier than waiting a couple of weeks.
--Santa
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