Market Analysis
This month, without the effect of Operation Shattered Web, the market is mostly back to normal, which can’t be said about the game itself – the devs are actively patching it every week or so, introducing lots of changes ahead of the release of Valorant, to compete with on an equal footing. Whether Source 2 engine is coming to CS:GO next month, or later this year, it will have a tremendous effect on the player community and the market. That hasn’t happened yet, so let’s see where the actual factors leave us in terms of price at the end of April.
Skins
AWP | Safari Mesh (Field-Tested), that topped the list in February, is the most popular skin once again. The regulars, AK-47 | Redline (Field-Tested) and AK-47 | Safari Mesh (Field-Tested), are followed by a new contestant – Desert Eagle | Oxide Blaze (Field-Tested), that is traded about 400% as often this month!
The effect of the influx of new traders is still very much pronounced, as we see a clear uptrend in skin prices. They seem to go up a lot more than they go down in price, which can be illustrated by the example of AWP | The Prince (Field-Tested). In March it gained over 30% in price, during April it did depreciate a bit, but only by 17%.
The same forecast can be made for the top gainers in April, especially the expensive ones, such as ★ StatTrak™ Huntsman Knife | Ultraviolet (Factory New), which is traded at nearly 5x the usual price. A few knives will probably be sold cheaper over May, but the price is unlikely to fall below $200, let alone the old levels in the short to medium term.
Stickers
While we’ve had a spike of interest in Katowice stickers, especially the 2015 set, during the last 2-3 weeks, the SW sticker set is still very much alive and kicking, with volumes across the whole set dropping only by about 10%. Its position at the top remains adamant, with Holo/Foil versions right behind the regular ones.
Price-wise, it’s a whole different story though, as the time has come for rare and old stickers to really shine in terms of profits. The community quickly picked up on the trend (which we shed some light on) and we’re seeing something akin to a butterfly effect – a few stickers gained in price, people started buying similar stickers while they could and now it until new stickers arrive, which may not be too soon.
Important events and trends in April
While the case bubble was in full bloom, a very valid concern was raised – whether the price spike is backed by actual rarity of cases and skins they contain, or it was just a fud/market manipulation. There’s a very helpful guide made by the community, that helps to make sense of such things as drop rotation, prime/non-prime and rare pool e.t.c., feel free to check it out before making any decisions about investing in cases.
If you somehow missed the feature on Katowice 2015 stickers, feel free to catch up. The key takeaways are: do not put expensive stickers on inexpensive guns, unless you want them to lose value, the supply is very limited so choose what to do with them wisely, and last but not least – keeping stickers of retired players in your inventory is a good investment.
Apart from that, the main events of this month surrounding CS:GO have had little impact on the market:
The code leak that happened earlier was reviewed by the dev team and flagged as non-critical officially.
Road to Rio is underway and closing in on the finals, but we won’t see any new stickers associated with it, since it’s not the major itself, but qualifications only. The actual offline event may be huge in terms of market impact though.
The Source 2 rumors haven’t been priced in yet, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on in the coming month or two.
