AWP | Neo-Noir (Factory New)

The AWP | Neo-Noir in Factory New (FN) is the cheapest way into a Covert AWP. The grade covers floats 0.00 to 0.07, and the other eighteen Covert AWPs cost more in the same grade. Its source is the Danger Zone Case, and its rank is Covert.

What the AWP | Neo-Noir looks like in Factory New

Valve describes the finish in a line: two stylized blue-purple figures on a gray ground, captioned with a note about shared despair. On the model you get one large face, set on the side of the receiver and running onto the stock. The hair, the eye and the black contour lines are drawn in detail, and there are no numbers or lettering in the artwork.

The top grade is separated from the rest by two thin details: a teal stripe along the barrel and a row of pink-purple dots near the muzzle. In Factory New both are intact along their full length. That is where the grades part ways, on the barrel and not on the portrait, because the large fills on the receiver are the last thing wear touches.

Where the AWP | Neo-Noir came from

The skin is number 803 in Valve's skin catalog. The Danger Zone Case arrived with the mode of the same name. In that update Valve listed seventeen Workshop submissions inside the case, plus a separate Souvenir MP5-SD for Prime owners. The author, donschi, closed the Neo-Noir series with this rifle, after versions for the M4A1-S and M4A4 had come out first. The Danger Zone Collection was released on December 6, 2018, the day CS:GO went free to play.

What to check before buying

Three things to look at on an AWP | Neo-Noir listing:

• the float: the spread inside the band is small, but at the top grade it still gets checked;


• the teal line at the muzzle, intact or not;


• any stickers or name tag a previous owner applied.

The artwork is fixed and does not change from one copy to the next. Between 0.00 and 0.07 there is next to nothing, so two random copies will be twins.

What the AWP | Neo-Noir costs in Factory New

This is the top of the scale, but you pay little for it. Minimal Wear is cheaper by roughly an eighth, Field-Tested by roughly a quarter. Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred land between those two values instead of below both: the skin's float cap is 0.50, so the scale simply has no heavily scuffed copies to offer.

Against the other Covert AWPs, this is the cheapest buy in this grade. The nearest neighbors above, AWP | Chrome Cannon and AWP | Chromatic Aberration, cost about a third more. The next step is a long one. AWP | Wildfire and AWP | Hyper Beast run almost three times higher, and AWP | Printstream sits higher still. AWP | Medusa, AWP | Dragon Lore and AWP | Gungnir cost two orders of magnitude more.

Getting the AWP | Neo-Noir

The direct route is the Danger Zone Case; no other case has held this finish. For a trade-up you put in ten skins from the tier below, all from one collection, which means Classified skins from the Danger Zone Collection itself. That collection has two Covert items, so the odds of landing the rifle are one in two.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Neo-Noir

The AWP | Neo-Noir 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 covers exactly the artwork you pay extra for in the top grade, so a craft works against the purchase itself. If you want one anyway, the stock and the pad near the scope are left for stickers, and the portrait on the receiver stays open.

Who this wear suits

Factory New on the AWP | Neo-Noir is worth buying when:

• you want a Covert AWP for CS2 on the smallest budget;


• you want the teal line on the barrel intact;


• you would rather not sort floats inside the band, since the copies here are alike.

In CS2 the difference between FN and the middle grades shows only on the barrel. The surcharge for it is small here, and that is the main case for the top grade on this skin.