AK-47 | Neon Rider (Field-Tested)

The AK-47 | Neon Rider in Field-Tested (FT) is a compromise on wear, neither the clean grade nor a beaten-up one, on one of the most recognizable neon AKs. The wear band here is 0.15 to 0.38. It is a Covert skin, and it drops from the Horizon Case. The collection's release date is August 1, 2018.

What the AK-47 | Neon Rider looks like in Field-Tested

A biker is drawn in the foreground of the receiver, and the background under him is built from overlapping neon stripes in pink, turquoise and violet. The colors are deliberately acidic and work as a pair with the dark underlay, which makes the artwork read like a sign. In Field-Tested the AK-47 | Neon Rider wears at the edge of the receiver and the top of the magazine. The biker stays untouched: he sits in the middle of the body, where wear arrives last.

What to check before buying

Two things matter when choosing a listing:

• the float: nearer 0.38 the neon stripes at the edges begin to dim;


• stickers on the body and a name tag on the weapon.

Copies do not differ in artwork, and a "rare" pattern does not exist.

In this grade the skin spans 0.15 to 0.38, and listings from the two ends of the band look different.

What the AK-47 | Neon Rider costs in Field-Tested

Relative to this grade, the others cost:

• Factory New is almost five times more;


• Minimal Wear is about one and a half times dearer;


• Well-Worn is about an eighth more;


• Battle-Scarred is cheaper by about a tenth.

The fivefold gap to the clean grade comes from the neon: it rests on even paint, and the first scuff dims it harder than it does on matte finishes. Curiously, Well-Worn costs more than the cleaner Field-Tested here, because it covers only the narrow band of 0.38 to 0.45, about a tenth of the scale.

Getting the AK-47 | Neon Rider

The skin comes from the Horizon Case, and its collection is the same.

It can also be had through a trade-up: the contract asks for ten Classified skins. If they are all from this collection, there are two Covert skins in the set, so the chance of landing the AK is one in two. The output float repeats the float of the inputs.

The Covert rank then feeds the knife craft: five Covert skins of the set return a random Extraordinary item. From the Horizon Case these are the Navaja Knife, Stiletto Knife, Talon Knife and Ursus Knife, the same four models as in the Prisma Case.

StatTrak and Souvenir

There is a StatTrak™ version of the AK-47 | Neon Rider. Souvenir packages were never released for this finish, as those were made only for the tournament map collections. Still, you can assemble a Souvenir copy yourself, because the Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on an ordinary inventory skin. That is why the odd Souvenir copy occasionally turns up even where no packages ever existed.

Stickers and craft on the AK-47 | Neon Rider

The background is saturated, and quiet stickers vanish on it entirely. What works is either holographic stickers that pick up the neon or dense black ones that make a hole in the busy artwork. Pink and turquoise stickers merge into the stripes. The room for a craft on this AK is the stock and the handguard; covering the receiver with the biker is not done.

Who this wear suits

Field-Tested makes sense in these cases:

• you want a bright neon AK for CS2 and do not need the fivefold premium for Factory New;


• it matters that the biker is untouched, and in Field-Tested he is whole;


• you would rather sort listings by number than by the wear label.

The neon along the edges is already muted in Field-Tested, and if you want the sign at full brightness, look at Minimal Wear.