Many people are interested in a simple and at the same time complex question from the series “What is the best quality of skins in CS2?” And if everything was limited only by the degree of wear. This is a huge layer of knowledge with many variables, nuances, and interesting aspects, which will certainly be useful to you when collecting and purchasing items from this game universe.
In short, quality is formed based on the following aspects:
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rarity;
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availability of a StatTrak counter;
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degree of wear;
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skin type (regular or contraband);
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belonging to souvenir items;
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stickers on the body.
Now let's look at what's what in detail.
How the rarity of skins is formed
If you try to approach this issue logically, you will not achieve anything. In the game you can see a lot of top pistols and rifles of Consumer Grade, or unremarkable Covert skins. What is Valve guided by when compiling the collection — unclear.
It is known that there are several types of rarity in the game:
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White (gray) — Consumer Grade;
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Light blue — Industrial Grade;
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Blue — Mil-Spec;
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Purple — Restricted;
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Pink — Classified;
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Red — Covert;
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Gold — extremely rare (knives or gloves).
We talk about this in more detail here. https://lis-skins.com/blog/kakie-skini-csgo/
But this gradation only applies to weapons and knives. Agents, gloves and stickers have their own rarity scale, although they all have one parameter in common — color. Follow the sign (purple, blue, red, etc.) to understand the value of items and understand what quality of skins is better in CS GO.
What is StatTrak
A StatTrak skin is, in fact, completely no different from the usual one, with the exception of one detail — counter of confirmed frags.
From a case, the StatTrak version drops in roughly one case out of ten, so on the secondary market the price difference between a regular pistol and its StatTrak analogue often differs by 300-500%, so keep that in mind.
Each weapon has its own counter. If you have, for example, two identical M4A4 Emperor (Factory New and Worn), each of them will keep its own statistics.
Wear — not an indicator
A player who does not understand what quality of skins is best to choose in CS GO will most often lean toward the freshest, Factory New ones. There are five levels of image wear in total:
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Factory New — complete transfer of the author's idea without scratches or abrasions;
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Minimal Wear — light traces of use;
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Field Tested — visible paint/gradation defects;
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Well Worn — significant pattern/texture wear, large amounts of bare metal;
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Battle-Scarred — often half-naked metal, on which it is difficult to determine the concept of the skin.
Example M4A4 Loyal Paladin in Worn Condition
And this is the same, but straight from the factory — the difference is noticeable.
But there are exceptions to any rule. Some skins simply become darker with increased wear, developing a layer of patina. As an example — AK-47 Cartel.
Others reveal hidden Easter eggs that were originally intended by the skin's author. Take the Nova Soldier shotgun, for example. When worn out, various gags appear on it, such as painted tanks on the body.
Some models of skins with a high degree of wear are valued even higher than factory ones. So everything is individual.
Contraband as an indicator of cool
If you more or less follow the skins market, you should understand the value of Contraband. It is rare, very limited in quantity and constantly rising in price.
Today in CS2 only two items can boast of this parameter:
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M4A4 Howl Rifle;
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Morning howl sticker.
And all because the author of the original image sued Valve for stealing the idea for the art from him. Things got so bad that Gabe, for the first time in the game, had to remove the original rifle, and redo the drawing on those that were already in gamers’ inventories.
Today you can no longer find Howl for free sale, and copies offered on trading platforms are obscenely expensive.
Souvenirs and everything about them
Is it possible to visually distinguish a souvenir item from an ordinary skin? No. Then why do they cost like a good used car? Because cases with them were distributed only at significant tournaments, championships and events.
You don’t have to look far for examples — 2018 Cobblestone collection with souvenir AWP Dragon Lore.
The rifle itself is extremely rare, and its souvenir version is not only as rare as a unicorn, but also the cases are quite expensive. We are generally silent about the keys to them.
But this does not happen with all skins. Some souvenirs cost a penny, and differ from ordinary ones only by a commemorative inscription visible in the inventory.
Stickers
If you want to know more information about CS2 stickers, read this. https://lis-skins.com/blog/Kak-poluchit-naklejki-CS-GO/
Recently, a significant incident occurred in the game community: one gamer bought the rare M4A4 Howl for $100 000. The money is simply cosmic.
But the skin is also notable for the fact that 4 iBUYPOWER stickers were previously pasted onto it at once, each of which today is estimated at around 5 thousand bucks!
This is a holographic sticker that could only be obtained from the EMS Katowice 2014 Challengers capsule. Actually, the sticker can still be obtained today, but the box will cost more than $2000. They are extremely rare.
So if you find some strange rifle that costs about $1, but they are asking 10-20 times more than the market value for it — always pay attention to the stickers.
To summarize
What did we get in the bottom line? And the fact is that there are a lot of exceptions to every rule. In 90% of cases, the best skin in terms of quality will be a Covert Factory New skin with a StatTrak counter.
But if you dig deeper — you can find so many interesting options that you didn’t even suspect.
