AWP | The Prince (Field-Tested)

Field-Tested (FT) on the AWP | The Prince is cheaper than both clean grades and than Battle-Scarred: the price of this finish bottoms out mid-scale. The float stretch is 0.15–0.38, over a third of a scale ending at 0.60. The rank is Covert; the rifle comes from The Canals Collection and sits in no case.

What the AWP | The Prince looks like in Field-Tested

Gold lies here in broad masses, over the stock, the receiver side and the front third of the barrel. The barrel's middle and the scope body stay black, and a graphite base carries the composition. The ornament is tight and scrolling, with plant and geometric elements; its main mass sits on the receiver side and repeats at the muzzle. Separate gold parts are the muzzle brake collar, the front scope ring and the stock cutout rim; the cheek rest is dark olive.

The small gold nodes have gone here: the collar, the scope ring and the stock rim lose their plating, and the side-edge scrollwork rubs away. On the receiver flat gold survives longer, and wear reads as black bald spots inside the pattern. At 0.15 there are almost none; at 0.38 they reach the masses.

Where the AWP | The Prince came from

No Workshop submission lies behind this rifle; it is Valve's own work. It entered the game with The Canals Collection on November 19, 2019, and carries catalog number 736.

What to check before buying

Points worth a look:

• the float inside 0.15–0.38, as bald spots reach the receiver flat near the top;


• the side-edge scrollwork, where thin lines go before the masses;


• the previous owner's stickers and any renaming.

Hunting by pattern index is pointless: the artwork never changes. The 0.15–0.38 band is wide, so one wear label covers many conditions.

What the AWP | The Prince costs in Field-Tested

• Factory New is about half again dearer;


• Minimal Wear about a fifth dearer;


• Battle-Scarred about a fifth dearer.

The gap to both grades is the same, roughly a fifth of the price. Going down the scale does not keep lowering it: toward Battle-Scarred it climbs again. Field-Tested covers 0.23 of the 0.60 where the scale ends.

Of nineteen Covert AWP finishes priced in this grade, this one is fourth. Only three stand above: AWP | Medusa by about a third, and AWP | Dragon Lore and AWP | Gungnir several times over. The nearest below, AWP | Desert Hydra, is almost half, AWP | Oni Taiji seven times less and AWP | Man-o'-war nearly fourteen.

Getting the AWP | The Prince

This finish has never been in a case. A trade-up takes ten skins a tier down. The Canals set holds one finish at that tier, the MAG-7 | Cinquedea, so the whole contract is built from it. The collection has a single Covert item.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | The Prince

No StatTrak version of the AWP | The Prince was ever released, and no Souvenir packages were made for this finish either: packages only ever covered tournament map collections. A souvenir copy can still be built by hand. The Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on a normal skin from the inventory. That is why the odd souvenir copy turns up where no package was ever made.

The side edges are rubbed here, so a sticker near an edge lands where gold has gone. The even spots are the black barrel middle and the scope body, clear of the ornament. The receiver side is not given to craft, and small stickers are lost on the bald spots.

Who this wear suits

This grade is the one to buy if:

• the lowest entry price into the finish is the goal;


• the rifle is for CS2 matches, where the ornament looks alike at range;


• picking by number matters, since node gold varies inside 0.15–0.38.

Clean nodes are not on offer: near the top of the band the collar and the scope ring have lost their plating. A showcase copy sits higher up the scale.