AWP | Sun in Leo (Factory New)

This is the AWP | Sun in Leo in Factory New (FN), and it costs several times more than any other version of the skin. Float values here run from 0.00 to 0.07. The skin is Industrial Grade and comes from the Gods and Monsters Collection. It has never dropped from any case.

What the AWP | Sun in Leo looks like in Factory New

The name promises astrology, but there is neither a sun nor a lion on the body. The receiver, stock and magazine are filled with cobalt blue, and over that runs a darker blue-violet swirl that resembles concentric lines. A blue ring sits at the muzzle brake, and the bipod and its tips are blue as well. The barrel and scope housing are black metal. The artwork has no focal center: the layered lines are laid out evenly over the side and the stock. There are no inscriptions, numbers or figures anywhere in the finish.

Here "Factory New" means even paint on the small details: the muzzle ring and the bipod legs are untouched, and the stock edges and butt plate are whole. These are exactly the places that lighten first in the lower grades. Inside the pattern wear barely registers: the lines are dark and already look mottled, so the grade is judged by the edges, not by the artwork.

Where the AWP | Sun in Leo came from

This finish has no Steam Workshop author: Valve made the artwork itself. The Gods and Monsters Collection came out on May 26, 2015. That happened together with Operation Bloodhound, where pass holders received items from the collections as a reward for playing.

In Valve's catalog of finishes the rifle is number 451, so it belongs to the early part of the list. Valve states the method of application outright: hydrographics with a zodiac motif.

What to check before buying

Three things to look at on an AWP | Sun in Leo:

• the float: the strip is short, but near the upper edge a pale rim appears on the stock edges;


• the state of the blue pieces on the bipod and the ring at the muzzle brake;


• a name tag and stickers already on the listing, which show in full against the even blue.

Patterns differ between copies: the hydrographic film lands with an offset, so the artwork shifts across the body.

The grade fits inside 0.00 to 0.07, so all listings look the same.

What the AWP | Sun in Leo costs in Factory New

The other grades sit below this one as follows:

• Minimal Wear is about two and a third times cheaper;


• Field-Tested, Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred are about three and a half times cheaper and sit nearly level with one another.

The gap between FN and everything else is very large for an Industrial Grade skin. The strip from 0.00 to 0.07 takes up about a seventh of the skin's scale, and the whole collection was handed out as an operation drop, bypassing cases.

This AWP has only two Industrial Grade finishes, and the Sun in Leo is the more expensive of them. Safari Mesh in the same grade costs an order of magnitude less.

Getting the AWP | Sun in Leo

The collection drop is the original route; no weapon case with this finish was ever released. For a contract on the AWP | Sun in Leo, take ten skins one step lower from this collection.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Sun in Leo

No StatTrak version of the AWP | Sun in Leo was ever released. Souvenir copies do turn up, but no Souvenir packages were made for this finish: 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.

Even blue is a calm background for stickers: almost anything reads on it except dark blue. The side of the receiver and the stock are free, the artwork holds no accents there, and a sticker covers nothing important. White and yellow work give the strongest contrast in CS2.

Who this wear suits

This wear of the AWP | Sun in Leo is worth buying for three reasons:

• you want an even blue AWP for CS2 with no graphics or lettering;


• an untouched body matters: in the lower grades the edges and small details lighten;


• the rifle is going into a sticker build, where the background has to be clean.

For FN you pay several times more than for the neighboring grade, and it differs only in the edges. If even paint on the bipod and the muzzle ring does not matter to you, Minimal Wear looks almost the same.