Desert Eagle | Printstream (Factory New)

The Desert Eagle | Printstream in Factory New: the white field on the slide is even, with no yellow creeping along the edges, and the fine print is whole. In float terms this grade of the Desert Eagle | Printstream covers 0.00 to 0.07. The rank is Covert, and the Fracture Case is the pistol's source.

What the Desert Eagle | Printstream looks like in Factory New

The border between light and dark follows the joints of the parts exactly. Slide and upper frame are an off-white with a cream tint; the frame below, the trigger guard, the trigger and the grip are a dark gray close to black. One element has color: the holographic strips by the ejection port and on the grip, pink shot through with pale blue.

Gray typographic artwork is laid over the white — an XX, a small heart, a barcode, halftone dots, drafting lines and little symbols. A graduated scale is printed down the backstrap. The set of marks reads like the margin of a proof sheet.

In Factory New (FN) the white pulls toward yellow nowhere, neither on the slide edge nor at the front face. The thin artwork survives down to the ticks of that scale, and since it breaks before the paint gives way, it identifies the top grade. The dark frame looks the same at any level of wear.

Where the Desert Eagle | Printstream came from

The artist behind the finish is JTPNZ. He put the work into the Workshop on June 3, 2020 under the title DESERT EAGLE | PRINTSTREAM and called it the piece that closed the Printstream series.

The geometry, crosses and rectangles, he traces back to Felipe Pantone; the ranks of dotted lines on the back of the grip he puts down to ASCII art. The pistol reached the game together with the Fracture Collection, on August 6, 2020. Valve's catalog gives the finish number 962.

What to check before buying

On a Desert Eagle | Printstream these are the things to look at before paying:

• float, because at the top of the band the slide edge already loses its clean tone;


• stickers on the body of the Desert Eagle | Printstream and a rename, if there is one;


• the state of the small marks and the ticks of the scale on the grip.

Two different layouts of the Desert Eagle | Printstream do not exist, and the band of 0.00 to 0.07 is narrow, so listings look alike.

What the Desert Eagle | Printstream costs in Factory New

The step down from the top grade is short: Minimal Wear asks around a third less. Below that the fall steepens, with Well-Worn at close to half, and Field-Tested and Battle-Scarred a little under that again.

The pearl shift across the white field is what the premium actually buys. Lower down the white goes gray, and the highlight along the slide edge is the first thing to die.

CS2 holds four Covert Desert Eagle finishes, and in the top grade the Printstream is cheaper than the other three. Desert Eagle | Code Red asks about two and a half times as much. Desert Eagle | Golden Koi is close to three times, Desert Eagle | Ocean Drive three and a quarter.

Getting the Desert Eagle | Printstream

The pistol drops from the Fracture Case, and no other case carries the finish. A contract reaches it as well: ten skins one rank below, out of that same collection.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the Desert Eagle | Printstream

The Desert Eagle | Printstream has a StatTrak version. No Souvenir packages were ever made for this finish, because 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.

Print occupies nearly the whole white field, so a sticker on the slide lands on top of the artwork and argues with it. The clear stretch is the dark frame below, where one bright badge reads better than a crowded set. Light gray stickers disappear on both halves: on the white they sink into the lines, on the dark they lose their outline.

Who this wear suits

Factory New on the Desert Eagle | Printstream is worth buying for three reasons:

• the white field is wanted without yellow on the slide edge;


• the fine artwork matters, down to the ticks of the scale;


• the step to Minimal Wear is short, so the premium stays small.

In CS2 a Deagle fills more of the first-person view than a rifle does, and the print on the slide reads right there in the hand. In the grades below it is the first thing to break up.