SSG 08 | Dragonfire (Minimal Wear)

This is the SSG 08 | Dragonfire in Minimal Wear (MW), and the fire artwork is still almost whole. The float band here is 0.07 to 0.15, or 16% of the skin's scale, which ends at 0.50. It is a Covert skin that either side can use, and it comes from the Glove Case.

What the SSG 08 | Dragonfire looks like in Minimal Wear

The Scout combines two color families. The forend and the front of the receiver blaze orange and red; toward the middle comes a band of dark scales with a dragon's head showing through. The stock is orange again. The barrel with its muzzle brake, the bipod and the scope stay black.

The artwork is presented as hydrographics: a monstrous dragon with fire pouring from its mouth. In Minimal Wear the first pale marks appear on the edges of the forend and stock, yet the fire burns almost as it does on a new copy. Wear is set when the skin drops, so a listing does not change over time.

What to check before buying

It is worth matching up the following on the SSG 08 | Dragonfire:

• float: in this wear the band is a tight 0.07 to 0.15, where the difference between listings is hard to catch;


• the edges of the forend and stock, where scuffing shows first;


• stickers and the name tag, which stay with the listing when the skin changes hands.

The pattern is the same on every copy of the SSG 08 | Dragonfire.

What the SSG 08 | Dragonfire costs in Minimal Wear

With Minimal Wear as the starting point, the other wears fall like this:

• Factory New costs about 1.3 times as much;


• Field-Tested costs about a tenth less;


• Well-Worn costs about a quarter less;


• Battle-Scarred costs about a sixth less.

The skin costs more than every one of the worn wears. The step up to Factory New is about a third, while the steps down run from a tenth to a quarter.

Of the two Covert SSG 08 skins, this is the pricier one in this wear. The SSG 08 | Blood in the Water costs about two and a half times less.

Getting the SSG 08 | Dragonfire

The skin has a single case, the Glove Case, and the collection came out of that case too. The Glove Collection reached the game in November 2016, and the skin was in it from day one. A trade-up for the SSG 08 | Dragonfire takes ten Classified skins from the same collection. The odds are one in two. From here the collection's Covert skins lead on to gloves, which are made through a craft.

StatTrak and Souvenir

There is a StatTrak version of the SSG 08 | Dragonfire. No Souvenir packages were released for this finish, as only tournament map collections ever got them. Even so, you can put a Souvenir copy together yourself with the Souvenir-O-Matic, which adds gold tournament stickers and a player's autograph to a regular skin from your inventory. As a result, single Souvenir copies show up from time to time where no package was ever made.

Stickers and craft on the SSG 08 | Dragonfire

The dark scales in the middle of the weapon suit light stickers, while the orange areas swallow red and yellow ones. Cool colors act as a counterweight to the fire. In CS2 it works best to group the stickers near the stock.

Who this wear suits

Minimal Wear is worth buying for three reasons:

• a Covert Scout with a lively fire pattern, without the surcharge for Factory New;


• prices close to Field-Tested, with less wear;


• a narrow float band, where picking by number is hardly needed.

In CS2 this is the same Scout, only with its wear written into the float value.