AK-47 | Slate (Well-Worn)

The AK-47 | Slate in Well-Worn (WW) turned out to be the cheapest of the five wears, cheaper even than Battle-Scarred. Valve describes the finish as black on black on slate-black: a fully dark rifle without a single colored accent. The float in WW runs from 0.38 to 0.45. It is a Restricted skin from the Snakebite Case, which came out on May 4, 2021, for CS2.

What the AK-47 | Slate looks like in Well-Worn

The finish is entirely black, in three shades at once, from matte to slate. There are no colored details at all, only shifts of tone. The whole AK-47 is black, and the design is built on the contrast between matte and glossy areas.

That is why wear works differently here than on colored skins: the paint rubs through to light metal, and on a black background those patches show very clearly. In Well-Worn the edges, the magazine and the top of the receiver are worn through. The stock and handguard stay dark, so the silhouette of the skin survives.

What to check before buying

The design of the AK-47 | Slate is the same on every copy, so you choose by other signs:

• float: on a black base every hundredth shows more than on colored skins;


• the listing screenshot: patches of light metal sit differently, and for appearance they matter more than the float number;


• a name tag and stickers left by the previous owner.

The spread within the wear is small, from 0.38 to 0.45, so listings look almost the same.

What the AK-47 | Slate costs in Well-Worn

No other wear of this skin sells for less. For comparison:

• Battle-Scarred costs more, even though it looks worse;


• Field-Tested costs about a fifth more;


• Factory New costs about four times as much.

This is not the usual case: normally the last wear is the cheapest, but here Well-Worn is. Its band is narrow, only 0.38 to 0.45, while the Field-Tested band, 0.15 to 0.38, is three times wider.

Getting the AK-47 | Slate

The AK-47 | Slate drops from the Snakebite Case, which came out on May 4, 2021.

The skin can also be assembled through a trade-up contract. For the Slate you need ten Mil-Spec skins of the collection, for example Glock-18 | Clear Polymer or Nova | Windblown. The output is one of the five Restricted skins of the set. It is random, and the chance of landing on the Slate is one in five, so nobody builds it to save money.

The wear of the result is inherited from the inputs: to get Well-Worn you need visibly battered inputs, and those are the cheapest to buy. That is why worn copies of the Slate often turn out to be contract results.

StatTrak and Souvenir

The AK-47 | Slate has a StatTrak version. Souvenir copies of the finish do exist too, but nobody released packages for it, since those were made only for tournament map collections. They are assembled in the Souvenir-O-Matic, where gold tournament stickers and a player autograph go onto an ordinary skin from the inventory.

Stickers and craft on the AK-47 | Slate

A fully black base is one of the handiest for a craft: any color reads on it, and the sticker becomes the only accent on the weapon. Bright holo and foil look especially good. Dark logos, on the other hand, get lost on the body. In Well-Worn the base is already spotted, so expensive stickers do not belong here.

Who this wear suits

Buying Well-Worn specifically on the AK-47 | Slate makes sense in these circumstances:

• you want the cheapest black AK-47 for CS2;


• you are planning a craft, and a low base cost is what matters;


• you want an austere loadout with no bright skins.

The downside: on a black background worn spots catch the eye more than on colored skins. If you want a tidy look, the step up to Field-Tested is small here and worth it.