Desert Eagle | Printstream (Battle-Scarred)

The Desert Eagle | Printstream in Battle-Scarred (BS) is a white slide with rubbed edges and a mark that still reads at the center. This wear runs from 0.45 to 0.80, and the finish's own ceiling is 0.80, so the scale has no lower edge. Covert rank; the Deagle drops from the Fracture Case.

What the Desert Eagle | Printstream looks like in Battle-Scarred

The slide and the top of the frame are milky white, while the frame, trigger guard and grip are dark gray, almost black. Fine graphics are scattered over the white: a large "XX" mark, a small heart, diamonds and card-suit symbols, a barcode and rows of dotted lines. Narrow holographic strips run along the grip and by the slide window.

In Battle-Scarred the white turns yellow and gray along the slide edges and at the front face, and the thin artwork breaks up there and in places disappears. The "XX" sits on a flat plane at the center and lasts longest. The dark frame hides scuffs better than the white does, so from below this Deagle looks almost as it does in the cleaner wears.

Where the Desert Eagle | Printstream came from

JTPNZ posted the Steam Workshop submission on June 3, 2020 and called this Deagle the closing piece of the first Printstream batch. He described the theme as graphic shapes, crosses and rectangles in a strict black-and-white palette, with a glance toward the artist Felipe Pantone. The dotted lines at the rear reminded him of ASCII art, and he took the name from a variable type in Java, the language in which such art is coded.

The author slipped the words "try again" into the magazine, in case the magazine is spent in vain. The pearl layer and normal maps were something he was trying for the first time on this work.

The Fracture Collection was released on August 6, 2020, and this skin has been part of it since the very start. In Valve's finish catalog it is listed as number 962.

What to check before buying

Buyers of the Desert Eagle | Printstream look at these points:

• the float, which decides how much white is left on the slide;


• the front face and the slide edges, where wear shows most;


• any stickers and name tag already sitting on this particular copy.

Copies of the Desert Eagle | Printstream differ only in wear, because the artwork is shared. The 0.45 to 0.80 band leaves room to choose: the closer to 0.45, the cleaner the copy.

What the Desert Eagle | Printstream costs in Battle-Scarred

Measured against this wear, the others cost:

• Factory New asks about twice as much;


• Minimal Wear asks about two fifths more;


• Well-Worn asks about a sixth more;


• Field-Tested asks just a few percent more.

Well-Worn costs more than Field-Tested even though it looks worse. Its 0.38 to 0.45 band takes less than a tenth of the finish's scale, while Battle-Scarred takes more than two fifths.

Of the three Covert Deagles in this wear, the Printstream is the cheapest. Desert Eagle | Code Red costs about a third more, and Desert Eagle | Ocean Drive nearly twice as much.

Getting the Desert Eagle | Printstream

This Deagle drops from the Fracture Case, and no other case carries the finish.

A trade-up for the Desert Eagle | Printstream takes ten Classified skins. The Fracture Collection has two Covert skins, so if every input comes from it, the odds on the Deagle you want are one in two.

StatTrak and Souvenir

The Desert Eagle | Printstream has a StatTrak version. No souvenir packages were released for this finish: those were made only for tournament map collections. A souvenir copy can still be built by hand, though. The Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on an ordinary skin from the inventory. That is why the odd souvenir copy turns up even where no packages ever existed.

Stickers and craft on the Desert Eagle | Printstream

The black-and-white base takes colorful stickers without argument: bright ones read at once, while light gray ones get lost in the graphics. In Battle-Scarred the white areas of the slide are already touched by wear, so little clean, even field is left for a large sticker. The "XX" at the center of the slide is usually left open.

Who this wear suits

Buying the Desert Eagle | Printstream in Battle-Scarred is reasonable in these cases:

• you want a Covert Deagle for CS2 at the lowest price in this wear;


• recognizable artwork with a clear mark at the center matters more than an intact white slide;


• a CS2 craft needs a cheap base on which colored stickers stand out in contrast.

If you want white planes without yellow edges, look at Minimal Wear: it costs about two fifths more.