Badges in CS2 and CS:GO come in two kinds. Collectible pins drop from Collectible Pins capsules or can be bought from other players: a capsule costs about $6 on the LIS-SKINS market, and a single pin runs from about $2 to $45. Steam community badges are free and are crafted from the game's trading cards. Below we cover both: which pin series exist, which pins are valued and how to get the free badges.
Service and tournament medals are not covered here; for those, see our guide on how to get a service medal in CS2. In short, medals are earned through XP and events, while pins have to be unboxed, bought or collected.
Ways to Get a Pin or Badge
All legitimate options come down to four:
open a Collectible Pins capsule: the pin is random, and rare ones drop infrequently;
buy a specific pin on the market: you get exactly the item you want at a known price;
trade with another player via a Steam trade offer; note that since 2025 any CS2 trade can be reversed within 7 days (Trade Protection);
craft a Steam community badge from the game's trading cards: the only free route.
The first three apply to collectible pins, which live in your CS2 inventory; the last applies to Steam profile badges. Each group is covered in more detail below.
Map Pins
Collectible pins appeared back in the CS:GO era as tournament-related trophies and carried over to CS2 along with the rest of the inventory. Demand turned out to be so strong that Valve released dedicated pin capsules. What you get from a capsule is random, and the chance of a rare pin is small.
How Many Pin Capsules Are Available
The game has three numbered pin series plus a separate Half-Life: Alyx capsule. Each one contains pins of different rarity, from High Grade to Extraordinary, and the odds of the top tier are minimal. If you want the Inferno, Mirage, Italy or Nuke pin, look for Series 1, which has 12 pins. Besides the maps, it includes Guardian, Victory, Militia, Train and Tactics. Its most expensive pins today are Guardian Elite (about $30) and Dust II (about $25), while most of the rest cost a few dollars.
Series 2 holds the Office pin along with Valeria Phoenix, Chroma, Cobblestone and Bravo. Many collectors value this series most: Valeria Phoenix is currently the most expensive pin in the game at about $45, and Chroma costs about $10. Office, Cobblestone and Bravo cost a few dollars each.
The Howl pin exists only in Series 3, alongside Brigadier General, Hydra, Wildfire and Death Sentence. Death Sentence stands out with its simple, jokey art next to the detailed designs, and since it is High Grade it drops often and costs about $2. Howl, by contrast, is rare and costs around $40. A Series 3 capsule is about $6 on LIS-SKINS, so buying the pin you want directly is usually cheaper than opening capsules hoping for it.
A separate series was released for the VR game Half-Life: Alyx. The Half-Life: Alyx capsule contains the Lambda pin in two versions, standard and Copper Lambda, as well as Civil Protection and Alyx herself. Interestingly, the Health pin, which is listed less often, costs about $25, no less than the higher-rarity Alyx pin.
What Pins Do
Collectible pins have no effect on gameplay: you cannot attach them to a weapon or an agent. You can display a pin on your profile and keep it in your inventory as part of a collection. Their value is mostly collectible: expensive pins noticeably raise your inventory value, and some players treat them as a long-term holding; read more in our article on investing in skins.
If you want to collect many pins without overspending, the simplest route is to buy specific pins on the LIS-SKINS market: it lists pins from all four capsules, usually cheaper than the Steam Community Market, where Valve takes about a 15% fee. Trades are automated, and you can also pay with items from your own inventory.
Free Badges
Besides paid collectible pins, there are Steam community badges crafted from the game's trading cards. How the cards drop and what limits Valve sets is covered in our article on how to get trading cards.
There are six of these badges:
Brass Recruit;
Guardian Angel;
Global Sentinel;
Elite Team Member;
Dusty Veteran;
Chicken Exterminator.
Elite Team Member deserves a separate mention as the hardest badge to get. It requires foil cards, and those drop rarely. The result does make a profile stand out.
Not every card for a badge will drop for you, but you can trade with other players for the missing ones. This also works for foil cards; it just takes longer.
There are other routes too, such as giveaways by official tournament organizers and verified streamers. Sites promising a "high chance" of a Howl or Alyx pin are best avoided: many exist to steal accounts, and even a well-protected Prime account is at risk. If anything about a giveaway looks suspicious, skip it. Never enter your Steam login on third-party sites, never share your API key and always check the page URL.
