Cases containing skin collections in CS:GO
have been around since 2013. In that time,
some have gone up in value. Others, down.
What if you bought one of each skin type soon
after release? How much would it be worth
now on the Steam Market? Time to find out.
The Weapon Case 1 was among the first skin
collections to be released, as part of the
Arms Deal update in 2013. There were 9 weapons
in total, each coming in stat-trak and non
stat-trak varieties. For some of these, Factory
New isn’t the rarest nor most valuable category
you could have invested in. But like you’d
have known that back then.
So for simplicity’s sake, imagine you went
out and bought a stat-trak and non stat-trak
version of each weapon, a week after launch-
which would have been August 21st, 2013. How
much would the skins have cost you back then?
The cheapest, unsurprisingly, would have been
the MP7 Skulls. This skin would only have
cost you 17p for the best, Minimal Wear exterior.
This skin now goes for £3.82- over 20x as
much!
The stat-trak wasn’t such a good investment.
This would have cost you £2.44 in 2013 and
sells today for £4.31.
Currently the most expensive skin in the collection
is the Covert-grade AWP Lightning Strike.
Buying a factory-new skin back then would
have cost £20.55, and goes today for £156.04.
Stat-trak cost £95.45, and now sells for
just under £400. It’s worth mentioning
the Minimal Wear variety- this is much rarer,
and hasn’t been sold on the market for a
while. Historically it’s sold for slightly
more, but recently the prices of both have
become more similar.
In total, buying the full set in the highest
quality a week after release would have cost
you £338.94 back in 2013, and can be sold
today for £1,516.55. 4 and a half times more.
Minus fees and stuff. Not bad!
If you had invested that money in a bank at
3% interest a year, you’d have £414.29
right now.
£338 of Amazon stock would now be worth £2,796.
And £338.94 of bitcoin bought in August 2013
would now be worth £31,800.
If blessed with the power of hindsight, you
should have bought £4,000 of the SG553 Ultraviolet
just here, and sold them here, making you
a millionaire. Of course, it isn’t as simple
as that because buying and selling in such
large quantities would have altered the market
immensely. But we’re talking time travel
here so the joke’s on you if you’re taking
it seriously.
But there’s an even better way. If you had
bought £1,667 of Weapon Case 1 cases just
here for 3p each, you could have sold them
all today and become a millionaire.
And the best deal goes to this AWP Lightning
Strike in 2018, when some poor person accidentally
missold for £1.64 instead of the market value
of £164 at the time. Poor him.
And that’s it for Weapon Case 1! Check out
my showcase video for it here. And remember:
it’s always easy with hindsight.
