AWP | Fade (Minimal Wear)

Minimal Wear (MW) is the second and last wear of the AWP | Fade. The finish's scale stops at 0.08, so Minimal Wear takes only 0.07 to 0.08, which is 12% of the scale. The skin is Covert and belongs to The Control Collection. Floats here run from 0.07 to 0.08.

What the AWP | Fade looks like in Minimal Wear

Paint covers the back of the rifle only: the side of the receiver, the stock, and the pistol grip with its guard. On the receiver, golden orange turns to red, then to crimson, and toward the butt becomes blue-violet. At the front the grip is golden orange. There is no other artwork, lettering or logos; the finish stands on the color transition.

The front is left unpainted. Barrel, muzzle brake, scope, bipod and bolt are black. The magazine stays gray metal, and the cheek pad and butt plate gray plastic. Valve describes the technique as transparent paints airbrushed so that they flow into one another over a chrome base.

In Minimal Wear, light metal starts to show on the receiver side edges, under the cheek pad and at the lower corner of the grip. These are the places where the transition breaks off most sharply. The flat of the side panel holds its color longest.

Where the AWP | Fade came from

No Workshop submission stands behind the AWP | Fade: it is Valve's own work. Valve's catalog numbers the skin 1026. Valve added The Control Collection in December 2020, and the skin arrived with the same update.

What to check before buying

Before paying for the AWP | Fade, look at these points:

• the colors on the side of the receiver: copies carry different shares of golden orange, red and blue-violet;


• the edges of the side panels and the rib under the cheek pad, where light metal shows;


• any stickers the previous owner left, and a name tag.

The wear fits within 0.07 to 0.08, so listings look alike on that count.

Color variance on the AWP | Fade

The transition does not lie on the body the same way every time: yellow, pink and violet are distributed differently from copy to copy. The narrow float decides nothing here, so you choose from the picture on the listing. A premium for a "lucky percentage" has nothing to confirm it.

What the AWP | Fade costs in Minimal Wear

Factory New is 1.35 times cheaper. The skin has no other wears, so Minimal Wear is its most expensive.

Among the Covert AWP skins priced in this wear, this one is fifteenth from the bottom of twenty: fourteen cost less and five cost more. Above it stands the AWP | Desert Hydra, about a third more expensive. Below come the AWP | Lightning Strike, the AWP | Oni Taiji, the AWP | CMYK and the AWP | Sovereign Flame. The cheapest of all is the AWP | Chrome Cannon, and the most expensive is the AWP | Gungnir.

Getting the AWP | Fade

The AWP | Fade is not in any case.

For a trade-up you hand in ten skins of the rank below. In this collection those are the M4A1-S | Blue Phosphor and the USP-S | Target Acquired. The collection has only one Covert skin, so the result of the contract is known in advance.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Valve never released a StatTrak version of the AWP | Fade. There were no Souvenir packages for this finish either; those were made only for 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.

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Fade

The front half of the rifle is black and free: barrel, scope housing and bolt take stickers without fighting the color. The side of the receiver with the transition is better left uncovered, since it is what the finish is bought for. On the chrome base, matte stickers look cleaner than glossy ones.

Who this wear suits

The AWP | Fade in Minimal Wear is worth buying in these situations:

• you want an AWP for CS2 with a colored rear and a black front;


• the color transition matters more than perfectly intact edges;


• you need the second option for this AWP: the skin has no wears other than Factory New.

If the edges should stay untouched and you do not want to pay more, Factory New is cheaper by a factor of 1.35.