Desert Eagle | Printstream (Minimal Wear)

The Desert Eagle | Printstream in Minimal Wear (MW) has a white slide barely touched at the edges and graphics that are still whole. The float band of this wear runs from 0.07 to 0.15, which is 10% of the skin's scale, and that scale ends at 0.80. It is a Covert skin, and the pistol drops from the Fracture Case.

What the Desert Eagle | Printstream looks like in Minimal Wear

The pistol divides into two parts: the slide and the top of the frame are milky white, and everything else is dark gray. Printer's graphics cover the white: a big "XX", card-suit symbols, a barcode, halftone dots and rows of dashes. Holographic strips by the slide window and on the grip throw off pink and light-blue flashes. Valve describes the skin as a strict black-and-white design with pearl glints.

In Minimal Wear, marks of use sit only along the very edges. The white at the slide edge and at the front face grays slightly, and the fine graphics lose some of their sharpness in places. The main marks are easy to read. Within the 0.07 to 0.15 stretch the look changes very little.

Where the Desert Eagle | Printstream came from

JTPNZ, an author from the Steam Workshop, drew the skin. He uploaded it on June 3, 2020 and called it the last piece of the Printstream series. By his account, many people said the crosses on the slide recall the loading screen of Need for Speed Carbon, and he likes that. Valve's catalog lists the skin as number 962, and it reached the game in August 2020 with the Fracture Collection.

What to check before buying

What matters when picking a Desert Eagle | Printstream listing:

• the float: at 0.07 the white is cleaner, and at 0.15 the slide edge is rubbed more visibly;


• the front face and the slide edge, where gray shows up first;


• the name tag and stickers this Desert Eagle already wears.

All copies carry the same pattern. In this wear they sit inside a narrow 0.07 to 0.15 band and are close to identical.

What the Desert Eagle | Printstream costs in Minimal Wear

Set against Minimal Wear, the rest of the ladder reads like this:

• Factory New is priced at one and a half times this wear;


• Field-Tested is about a quarter cheaper;


• Well-Worn is about a sixth cheaper;


• Battle-Scarred is almost a third cheaper.

Within this wear the Printstream is the lowest priced of the four Covert Desert Eagle finishes. Desert Eagle | Code Red costs about a sixth more. Desert Eagle | Ocean Drive runs one and a half times as much, and Desert Eagle | Golden Koi almost four times.

Getting the Desert Eagle | Printstream

In CS2 the Desert Eagle comes from the Fracture Case, and no other case holds this skin. Beyond the case, a trade-up delivers it too, with ten skins from the next rank down in the same collection. The collection has two Covert skins, so the odds of getting this one are one in two.

StatTrak and Souvenir

There is a StatTrak version of the Desert Eagle | Printstream. Souvenir packages were never issued for this finish, since they were made only for tournament map collections. Still, a souvenir copy can be assembled: the Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on an ordinary skin from your inventory. This is why single souvenir copies show up now and then even for skins with no package behind them.

Stickers and craft on the Desert Eagle | Printstream

The slide is busy with graphics, so a large sticker lands on top of them. The dark frame is calmer: contrasting stickers read clearly there, while light gray ones placed on the white blend into the lines.

Who this wear suits

Minimal Wear is the right buy for the Desert Eagle | Printstream if at least one of these holds:

• you want a white slide without noticeable gray, but not at the Factory New premium;


• the graphics need to read across the whole slide;


• the Desert Eagle is going to serve as a base for stickers in CS2.

If you need fully clean graphics, look at Factory New, which costs one and a half times as much.