AK-47 | Vulcan (Minimal Wear)

Minimal Wear (MW) is the compromise the whole demand for the AK-47 | Vulcan rests on. A factory-clean copy is one step away, and the step shows only on the edges of the white plates. The float strip is 0.07 to 0.15, a ninth of the finish's own scale. The rank is Covert, and the collection is the Huntsman.

What the AK-47 | Vulcan looks like in Minimal Wear

The dark half of the finish barely answers to wear: the graphite underside of the handguard, the black ribbed grip, the black barrel and gas tube. On the stock an angular light-gray figure lies over a dark ground. The light half is cut into plates, milky white on the handguard top, the receiver side and the magazine. Pale blue is added in three spots: behind the rear sight, as a wedge on the receiver side, as a stripe along the magazine.

In Minimal Wear the gray turns up where the plates stand proud: the handguard top, the receiver edge, the magazine ribs. The blue inserts are still holding their color; they gray one step further down. The chevron cuts are intact both under the handguard and on the magazine, so in a preview such a copy barely reads as different from a factory one.

Where the AK-47 | Vulcan came from

The rifle reached the game on May 1, 2014. One author stands behind the finish, the Steam Workshop artist jim´s, who had posted the submission as "Vulcan: AK-47" a few months earlier. In his write-up he said he had reworked the wear mask for the sake of the seams between sections, and on white plates that work is visible. Valve numbers the artwork 302.

What to check before buying

Copies of the AK-47 | Vulcan differ by this:

• the float within 0.07 to 0.15, where the lower end leaves the edges of the white plates even;


• the state of the receiver edge, which grays before any of the flats do;


• whether the AK-47 | Vulcan carries stickers and an applied name.

Inside 0.07 to 0.15 there is no better copy to go looking for. The AK-47 | Vulcan has no pattern variance either: what one listing shows, the rest show too.

What the AK-47 | Vulcan costs in Minimal Wear

Factory New is dearer by about half, and no other grade stands this close in price. Downward the fall is faster: Field-Tested is roughly half as much, Well-Worn two and a half times cheaper, Battle-Scarred three and a half.

In this grade the AK-47 | Vulcan is fifth by price among twenty-four Covert AK-47s. AK-47 | AUTOEXEC trails by about a sixth, AK-47 | Leet Museo by a quarter, AK-47 | Fuel Injector by half. The only ones still above it are AK-47 | X-Ray, AK-47 | Fire Serpent, AK-47 | Gold Arabesque and AK-47 | Wild Lotus.

Getting the AK-47 | Vulcan

Opening a case is the first route, and the Huntsman Weapon Case holds this finish at Covert rank.

Trading up is the second. Ten skins one rank below go into the contract, all of them from a single set. That set is the Huntsman Collection, so USP-S | Orion, USP-S | Caiman, SCAR-20 | Cyrex or M4A1-S | Atomic Alloy will serve. More than one Covert item sits in the set, so the outcome is random.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AK-47 | Vulcan

The AK-47 | Vulcan has a StatTrak version. Souvenir copies of the finish turn up as well, though no Souvenir packages were ever made for it: packages only ever covered tournament map collections. Those copies are built with the Souvenir-O-Matic, which puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on a normal skin from the inventory.

A sticker goes on a flat here, and in Minimal Wear the gray keeps to the edges, so it stays whole longer than the plate beneath it. On a white and blue base dark and red stickers win on color, while blue ones dissolve into the inserts. The stock and the side of the magazine take a large craft.

Who this wear suits

Minimal Wear is the reasonable buy here in these situations:

• the factory look is wanted but the half-again premium for it is not;


• the rifle goes both into CS2 and into the inventory, since gray along the edges does not read in a match;


• predictability counts: the strip is narrow and listings resemble one another.

Below this grade the white plates gray across whole flats in CS2, and the tidiness of the finish is gone.