Glock-18 | Fade (Factory New)

Glock-18 | Fade in Factory New (FN) is the clean end of the scale on the dearest purple Glock. The wear scale breaks off at 0.08, so the finish has two grades. The skin has never been in a case: it comes from The Assault Collection, among the oldest sets in the game. The rank is Restricted.

What the Glock-18 | Fade looks like in Factory New

Only the slide is painted. Frame, trigger guard, grip and barrel are stock gray graphite, so color covers about the top third of the silhouette. The gradient runs the full length: golden copper at the muzzle, then crimson red, and blue-violet on the rear serrations. The richest part falls on the tail, right before the shooter's eyes.

The base under the paint is chrome and the paints transparent, so the slide shifts with the light. No artwork or lettering appears at all, and the slide stop is red. The factory stippling on the grip stays visible and untouched.

The color is broken nowhere here. Wear starts at the top ribs and the rear serrations, at the edges of the gradient. The flat side holds longer, but any scratch there reads as light metal across the color.

Where the Glock-18 | Fade came from

Valve drew it, and the catalog number has two digits: 38. The set appeared on August 14, 2013 with the first map collections. Valve names the method outright: transparent paints airbrushed over chrome. The description is signed by Imogen, an arms dealer's apprentice.

What to check before buying

Listings are picked on these points:

• the float, which here is close to zero in any case;


• the spread of colors, which differs between copies and sets the whole look, since nothing else is painted;


• the color on the top ribs, where the gradient breaks first;


• what the previous owner left on the pistol, stickers and an applied name included.

The 0.00–0.07 band is narrow, and copies here are practically indistinguishable.

What the Glock-18 | Fade costs in Factory New

The second and last grade, Minimal Wear, costs about half again. Nothing sits below it, as the scale ends at 0.08. So the clean grade is cheaper than the scuffed one, while looking neater.

Inside the rank the gap is huge. Eighteen Restricted Glocks exist here, and the Fade is dearer than all seventeen others. The nearest below, Glock-18 | Synth Leaf, is about four times cheaper, and Glock-18 | Brass and Glock-18 | Franklin an order of magnitude down.

Getting the Glock-18 | Fade

The set was never packed into cases, so the finish cannot be unboxed: a finished listing or a trade-up is what remains.

A trade-up needs ten skins a rank down. The collection has two Restricted finishes, so the odds of landing the Glock are one in two.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the Glock-18 | Fade

No StatTrak version of the Glock-18 | Fade 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 shifting slide argues with any sticker, though the graphite frame does not swallow one. Matte stickers read better than foil: the finish has a shine of its own and a holo competes. CS2 crafts here are built from cool colors, since warm ones disappear into the gradient.

Who this wear suits

Factory New is the grade to buy when:

• a clean gradient is wanted, with no light specks along the ribs;


• the pistol goes into an inventory, since in CS2 the slide is barely visible up front;


• the age matters, the finish coming from a 2013 map set.

Both grades look much alike, since by 0.08 scuffing has not reached the slide's flat. What is paid for is the number in the listing, not the picture, and here that payment is the smaller one.