AWP | Fade (Factory New)

The AWP | Fade comes in two wears, and Factory New (FN) is the cleaner one. The float scale ends at 0.08, so the clean wear takes up almost the whole range. Covert rank. The skin never dropped from any case: The Control Collection arrived together with Operation Broken Fang.

What the AWP | Fade looks like in Factory New

Only the rear half of the rifle is colored. Gold-orange begins on the side of the receiver, moves into red, then crimson, and slides into blue-violet at the buttplate. The paint also covers the pistol grip and its guard, with the front of the grip staying gold-orange. The magazine, the cheek piece and the butt pad got no paint: they are gray metal and gray plastic.

Everything ahead of the receiver is left as bare black metal: the barrel, the muzzle brake, the scope, the bipod and the bolt. That part is about half the length of the rifle, and in CS2 it is exactly what fills the frame in first person. The AWP | Fade has no artwork, no lettering and no logos; the whole finish rests on the color transition.

Translucent coats sit on top of a chrome base, which is why the receiver shimmers in the light. In Factory New the color is solid: the side edges, the ridge under the cheek piece and the lower corner of the grip are untouched. Those spots wear first, and the transition breaks off most sharply on them.

Where the AWP | Fade came from

The author of the finish is Valve itself, and its number in the catalog is 1026. The Control Collection was released on December 3, 2020, the same day as Operation Broken Fang. The collection's skins were handed out for completing the operation's missions; it has no case of its own. Valve wrapped up the year in a separate note that names Broken Fang among the updates that brought new weapon collections.

What to check before buying

In this wear the AWP | Fade is a float slice from 0.00 to 0.07. Choosing a particular AWP | Fade rests on these points:

• float: it never goes past 0.07, and the transition stays whole along every edge;


• color distribution: the share of each color differs from copy to copy, so compare listings by the picture;


• the name tag and stickers that come with the listing.

Within 0.00 to 0.07 there is no best copy to hunt for.

What the AWP | Fade costs in Factory New

Minimal Wear is the only other wear, and it costs about a quarter more. There is nothing else to compare against: Field-Tested and below do not exist for this finish, so the clean grade here is also the cheaper one.

Among Covert AWP skins in this wear, the AWP | Fade sits in the middle: thirteen finishes cost less and five cost more. Right below it are AWP | CMYK and AWP | Oni Taiji. Above it the gap is wide: AWP | Medusa costs almost eight times more, while AWP | Dragon Lore and AWP | Gungnir move into another price class.

Getting the AWP | Fade

You cannot unbox this finish: The Control Collection was handed out for finishing the operation and never reached any case.

The route that skips buying is a trade-up contract: ten skins of the rank below from the same collection, and the AWP | Fade comes out. The collection has only one Covert skin, so the result of the trade is known in advance.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Fade

No StatTrak version of the AWP | Fade was ever released. There were no Souvenir packages for this finish either: they were made only for the tournament map collections. But you can build a Souvenir copy yourself — the Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on an ordinary skin from your inventory. That is why the odd Souvenir copy turns up now and then even where no packages ever existed.

Half of this rifle is black and free: the barrel, the shroud under the scope and the bolt take stickers without fighting the finish. The side of the receiver with the transition is usually left uncovered, since the transition is what people buy the finish for. Foil loses out next to the chrome base; matte stickers look cleaner in CS2.

Who this wear suits

There are three reasons to buy this wear of the AWP | Fade:

• you want the transition whole: the side edges and the ridge under the cheek piece are untouched here;


• the rifle is headed for the inventory, since in-game you mostly see the black front half;


• the tie to Operation Broken Fang matters: the collection has no other cases or drops.

There is no need to pay extra for the second wear: Minimal Wear costs more with the same artwork. The difference between them comes down to wear on the edges of the receiver.