The Oldest Skins in Counter-Strike: What Became of the Arms Deal Collections 13 Years On
On August 14, 2013, Valve shipped the update that stopped Counter-Strike from being just a shooter. The Arms Deal Update brought in decorated weapons, two cases, eight collections tied to maps, keys, trading, Steam Community Market listings and the inspect view.
The community wasn’t impressed. Half the forums argued that paint jobs had nothing to do with competitive CS and that Valve was messing about instead of fixing the balance. The other half quietly sold an AWP for eight dollars to cover the cost of a key. Nobody — not the players, and we suspect not the developers either — imagined that 13 years later those pixels would prop up a market with absurd turnover, a trading profession and an entire industry of third-party sites.
The first skins in Counter-Strike history turn 13 today. Good reason to walk through every collection from that update and remember how it all looked.
How this actually worked back in 2013
The system was far simpler than anything we have now, and that was the charm of it.
Skins turned up on their own. You played on official servers and sooner or later a random item landed in your inventory. No weekly caps, no battle passes, no missions — just time in game. Which is where the great myth of the era came from: everybody was convinced the drop depended on where you were playing, and that you had to farm the right map to get the right item.
That update also introduced things we now take completely for granted: wear levels from Factory New to Battle-Scarred, StatTrak with its kill counter, and knives in cases. The Karambit, M9 Bayonet, Bayonet, Flip Knife and Gut Knife went into the first two cases from day one.
- AWP | Lightning Strike — 2013: $8–10 / 2026: $450–482
- AK-47 | Case Hardened — 2013: $5–15 / 2026: $168–392
- Desert Eagle | Hypnotic — 2013: $2–3 / 2026: $154–171
- Glock-18 | Dragon Tattoo — 2013: $1–1.20 / 2026: $88.81–107
- Knives: Karambit, M9 Bayonet, Bayonet, Flip Knife, Gut Knife
The first case in the game’s history. Nine skins, drawn at a point when nobody had any idea what a decorated weapon in CS was supposed to look like, so the set ended up with no unifying theme whatsoever.
Total chaos: lightning across the body of the AWP, a spiral on the Desert Eagle, wall-to-wall ultraviolet on the SG 553. Next to that, a run of black-and-white artwork — a dragon on the Glock slide, feathers on the AUG, skulls on the MP7, dark swirls on the M4A1-S and USP-S. And then, sitting apart from all of it, Case Hardened with its blue-and-gold finish, the only skin in the set that reads as an actual weapon rather than a coat of paint over one. That AK went on to put the entire skin industry on the map, and eventually sold for a six-figure sum.
- Glock-18 | Fade — 2013: $13–15 / 2026: $1,590–1,919
- MP9 | Bulldozer — 2013: $0.89–12 / 2026: $81.04–994
- AUG | Hot Rod — 2013: $2–4 / 2026: $349–680
Assault is a map about an abandoned building supply warehouse, and the collection was dressed up as the heavy machinery you’d find on site. Yellow, red, blue — digger and forklift colours, no artwork at all, just solid paint across the body.
The set logo makes the point outright: a Parker Building Materials Inc. sign done in the style of old American roadside advertising. Only one item breaks ranks, the Glock with its pink-to-yellow gradient — the one piece here that has nothing to do with a construction site, clearly wandered in by accident, and outlived every other skin in the collection.
- Desert Eagle | Blaze — 2013: $11–16 / 2026: $612–681
- Glock-18 | Brass — 2013: $3–8 / 2026: $20.77–121
- P2000 | Scorpion — 2013: $2–8 / 2026: $59.42–85.28
The original Dust has been gone from the game for years, but its collection stayed behind, and it’s the most coherent set of the whole update. Sand, ochre, sun-bleached wood, camouflage netting stretched over the barrels. The weapons were built to disappear into the map rather than stand out on it.
The set icon is the skull in a circle that anyone who played old CS knows by heart. The one bright spot in the lineup is the Desert Eagle wrapped in flames, a skin that looked borderline provocative against all that sand 13 years ago.
- AK-47 | Red Laminate — 2013: $5–20 / 2026: $45.48–467
- AWP | BOOM — 2013: $7–15 / 2026: $96.00–361
- P90 | Death by Kitty — 2013: $8–10 / 2026: $71.62–81.40
- Knives: Karambit, M9 Bayonet, Bayonet, Flip Knife, Gut Knife
The second case of the update, and the first time in history that ordinary players chipped in directly toward tournament prize money. The community took it in stride. Not a word of complaint about Valve making money off them.
The look was pulled straight from the branding of the game’s esports section. Cracks running across the AWP, orange scorch marks on the M4, red laminate on the AK stock, rust bleeding across the Tec-9 and the Nova. Exactly one item escapes that strict palette: the P90 covered in pink kittens, skulls and acid colours.
- Tec-9 | Nuclear Threat — 2013: $1–50 / 2026: $37.60–793
- P250 | Nuclear Threat — 2013: $3–40 / 2026: $35.16–458
- M4A4 | Radiation Hazard — 2013: $2–38 / 2026: $23.80–400
The most on-theme collection in the update. Red industrial camo, yellow radiation trefoils, hazard striping — everything the player already sees on the map, transferred onto the guns.
The set also runs a separate line of toxic green pistols streaked with drips, as though the weapon had been pulled out of a waste drum rather than an armoury. The collection logo is styled as a power plant’s factory seal, and this is the rare case where a set reads as one story instead of a handful of paint jobs.
- SCAR-20 | Splash Jam — 2013: $0.50–1.50 / 2026: $13.87–68.87
- M4A4 | Modern Hunter — 2013: $1–20 / 2026: $39.43–520
- P250 | Modern Hunter — 2013: $0.30–1 / 2026: $37.00–290
Militia was never a competitive map, and the collection matches it perfectly: a farmhouse, a field, a windmill on the icon, and a full rack of hunting camouflage.
This set has the most shotguns and the least interest in being taken seriously. Tree bark and dry grass across the bodies, the blaze orange people wear duck hunting, and, as a genuine surprise, pink camo on the SCAR-20 that looked like pure vandalism back in 2013. A collection for anyone who wanted to drop into a match straight from the shed.
- AK-47 | Jungle Spray — 2013: $1–5 / 2026: $9.19–154
- M4A4 | Jungle Tiger — 2013: $0.10–3 / 2026: $8.17–94.57
- Tec-9 | Ossified — 2013: $0.20–0.40 / 2026: $19.99–20.15
The smallest and most monochrome of the eight. It’s green and nothing else: jungle blotches, tiger stripes, swamp khaki, murky green on the pistols. No artwork, no drawings, pure camouflage matched to the undergrowth around the pyramid. The set icon, on the other hand, is one of the prettiest in the update — a white stepped pyramid on turquoise, done like a vintage travel poster.
- M4A4 | Tornado — 2013: $0.20–3 / 2026: $6.12–122
- Tec-9 | Brass — 2013: $0.10–0.40 / 2026: $2.43–79.35
- Dual Berettas | Anodized Navy — 2013: $0.50–0.70 / 2026: $13.94–15.54
The irony here is that Inferno is one of the most important maps the game has ever had, and it got the quietest collection of the lot. The palette isn’t military, it’s Mediterranean: blue paint, brass, varnished wood, sandstone. The exact colours you see on the map itself — the shutters, the roof tiles, the walls. The shotgun with its wooden forend looks like it came off the wall of a bar, and the navy Dual Berettas are the most recognisable item in the set, even though nobody has ever chased them.
- MP7 | Whiteout — 2013: $1–11 / 2026: $24.46–995
- P2000 | Silver — 2013: $1.20–1.80 / 2026: $81.40–114
- Galil AR | Winter Forest — 2013: $0.30–2 / 2026: $19.23–215
The snowed-in office got the only winter collection of the update. White, grey, pale blue — winter camo, frost on the metal, snow drifting across the bodies. It’s the most restrained set here: not one bright colour, not one joke, not one attempt to grab your attention. The P2000 is simply chrome, with no artwork on it at all. The icon, an embossed snowflake on a metal plate with a room number, follows the same logic. Deliberately clerical, exactly like the map.
- AK-47 | Black Laminate — 2013: $7–30 / 2026: $33.99–298
- P90 | Glacier Mesh — 2013: $1–6 / 2026: $4.23–39.76
- Dual Berettas | Demolition — 2013: $1.20–1.50 / 2026: $9.55–15.47
Closing out the update is the collection for the unfinished high-rise, and it sticks strictly to the brief. The only splash of colour comes from the bright orange pistols, which look like construction crew hi-vis. The result is the most grown-up set of the update: no kittens, no dragons, no purple lightning, just building materials. The icon, a red 51 on a steel plate, is a nod to the floor itself.
Thirteen years on
Half the maps on this list never made it to CS2, the cases have all but stopped dropping, and the skins themselves migrated long ago out of the inventories of ordinary players and into the collections of people who went looking for them.
But everything we have today — Majors with stickers, five-figure knives, trade-ups, patterns, marketplaces, endless arguments about prices — grew out of these ten collections.
Happy thirteenth. Go and check your old accounts. You never know what’s been sitting there since 2013.
Alex
Alex is an author and esports observer with more than seven years of experience. He specializes in analyzing new releases in the world of computer games, gaming services, and in-game economies. Alex shares practical experience and an expert perspective on the development of gaming, helping readers understand complex mechanics and stay up to date with the latest news.
