Extremely rare CS:GO AK-47 skin sold for over $400,000

Cal Jeffrey

Cal Jeffrey

Posts: 4,179   +1,427
Staff member
WTF?! How much would you pay for a cosmetic item in a game? $1? 10? $100. What about $100,000? I didn't think so, but someone has paid four times that on one sale. An online CS:GO skin reseller just made over half a million dollars on a transaction containing only two cosmetic items. One was valued at over $400,000.

Occasionally, we hear of an outlandishly ridiculous sale for some virtual product that has us shaking our heads and asking ourselves, "Why would anybody pay so much for that?" Case in point, the guy that just dropped over $500,000 down on two items in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). Yes, you read that right someone paid six figures for two weapon skins.

A manager on the skin-trading platform SkinBid who goes by the handle Zipel carried out the transaction on behalf of SkinBid cofounder Luksusbums, who owned the skins. The sale included two items – #1 AK-47 661 ST MW with 4x Titan (Holo) and a "well-worn" Karambit #387 P1 combat knife. Zipel tweeted the news over the weekend.

Zipel didn't list the specific prices for each item but did say that the total transaction was over half a million dollars, making it what he claimed was the "second largest" sale in CS history. He later tweeted that Luksusbums got more than $400,000 on the AK-47. The tweet was a brag because everybody thought Luksusbums was crazy for asking so much for the skin. Nobody thought he would get anywhere close to that price.

It is an ungodly sum for a product you don't physically own. When CS:GO finally goes offline, that $400,000+ skin is gone too. Of course, CS:GO isn't going anywhere anytime soon, which is part of why the skin could fetch such a high price.

Last month, Valve announced Counter-Strike 2 was coming as a free CS:GO update, which fired up the community. Traders were somewhat worried about a devaluation of current skin offerings. However, Valve later said that legacy skins would be compatible with CS2, and skin valuations spiked with the news.

The gun cosmetic fetched such a high price because of its rarity. This specific skin is also known as "Seed 661." The website CS GO Blue Gem lists it as the "#1 pattern" for the AK-47, with the "best scar pattern" of the skins in its class. It was also decorated with four Titan Holo stickers, which were given out during an esports tournament last year. Only 38 stickers exist and this gun has four of them.


This knife only cost the buyer a bit shy if $100,000.

"Rumors say that you need to sell your soul to the devil to find it [in-game] or through a trade-up: it is a statistical anomaly," notes Blue Gem.

The blog CS.money also claims that Seed 661 is the rarest "hardened pattern" in the game, with only 121 known spawns in CS:GO's history. It also says that "hundreds of thousands of dollars" is not an unfair valuation for the cosmetic item, considering the highly active CS:GO skin market.

Furthermore, it not the first CS:GO item to sell for an outlandish amount. In response to Zipper's brag of having the second largest CS sale, another user claimed that he sold an item in 2014 that was worth $1.8 million ($2.3 million when adjusted for inflation). Zipel conceded admitting that he was "#3." An almost identical AK-47 sold for $775,000 in 2021.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98379-extremely-rare-csgo-ak-47-skin-sold-over.html

 
Don't these charges normally get reversed when Mom receives the credit card (or AMEX in this case) statement?
 
Love how everyone here is hating on the trade thinking it's like NFTs or something

Example:
TheBigT42 said:
Anyone spending $$$ on purely cosmetic items is stupid.
A foo and his money are soon parted
Click to expand...

People who don't know what they're talking about make me laugh, the value of these items will only appreciate over time (unless a STFN 661 pattern gets unboxed, which would make said unboxed skin #1) and can be cashed out whenever, so no, they aren't wasting their money.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JamTastesBetter
This article really likes shitting on CS: GO's market, which is fair, my friends think it's dumb too.

I do also feel like this article however doesn't understand the market conditions which led to this level of stupidity.
Unlike NFT's, which were "unique" and had "value" on the blockchain, CS: GO skins do have some value to players, Counter Strike is also a competitive esports game with peaks of 1.5 million players daily. You are much better off comparing them to Pokémon cards, which are rare in the sense that lets say the Charizard's that fetch crazy amounts of money because there is extremely limited supply and extremely high demand.

Valve profits off CS: GO skins when a) you open a case with a key which you must purchase of the steam store, opening gives you a random item, often worth sometimes only a few cents. B) The tax you pay when you sell an item on the steam store. What's unique about this however is CS: GO has a trading system, which enables players to send items to each other free of charge, however, each item has a 7-day cooldown before it can be traded again. Third party websites which take either a commission or a little bit of the money you make off a skin to make their own money similar to the Steam market, which these websites circumvent.

No different to Pokémon cards, Cases and Collections where you get your skins from get discontinued after a period, decided by Valve. These skins come from collections that are in "the rare drop pool" where you have a 1% chance to get one of these from your weekly case drop, the AK-47 in this case comes from the CS: GO Weapon Case, which is dwindling in supply and each case costs $121 AUD or $81 USD depending on which website you use, because of the tax and demand, items are generally more expensive on the steam market.

Make what you want of it but unless the game dies soon (it isn't) these skins aren't going to rapidly depreciate - and because of this fact confidence in the market has shown a recent boom in liquid skin prices. There is a legitimate market, each skins is unique in it's own way. The only downside is that there is a massive corporate entity who could destroy the market (albeit, opening them up to fairly reasonable lawsuits) in seconds.

Call it stupid however you like, but you'll also get a lot of angry collectors who have confidence in the value of their skins in your DMs on Twitter.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tetr1s
Tetr1s said:
Love how everyone here is hating on the trade thinking it's like NFTs or something

Example:

People who don't know what they're talking about make me laugh, the value of these items will only appreciate over time (unless a STFN 661 pattern gets unboxed, which would make said unboxed skin #1) and can be cashed out whenever, so no, they aren't wasting their money.
Click to expand...
The only downside is if the game dies so does the economy 😭😭.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TheBigT42 and Tetr1s
I dont think it is stupid. Make a game that lasts this long. Make a game that so many people play and do tournaments. Make a game that can run on a potato and still looks very good.
And it is Steam which matters too.
It is not stupid given how humanity works.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

midian182
  • Locked
Microsoft issues warning on China's use of generative AI to disrupt US elections
2
Replies
41
Views
521
GodisanAtheist
GodisanAtheist
midian182
Amazon exec: robots and automation will enhance, not replace, human jobs
Replies
17
Views
191
Eldrach
Eldrach
midian182
  • Locked
Tesla is laying off 10% of global workforce amid declining sales and production cuts
2
Replies
30
Views
334
Endymio
Endymio

Latest posts

Back