The Best Fruits And Veggies and Auto Racing Stickers: First Prices, a Record-Low ROI, and What Happens to Them Next
Last time we broke down the best skins from the two new collections. Now it’s the stickers’ turn. The trade holds have lifted and the first copies have already hit the market — and there’s nothing here to comfort investors. So let’s talk prices and returns first, then get into the individual stickers and focus on the visuals.
All prices in this article are the first market sales on Steam as of publication. It’s about as volatile a number as it gets — in the opening days it shifts by the hour — so treat these figures as a snapshot of the market at launch, not a settled value.
The Future of the Arabesque, Spy Tech, Fruits And Veggies, and Auto Racing Collections. Dead on Arrival for Investors?
We’ve said before that, by most accounts, a huge number of these new collections got opened in the first few days — the community had been hoarding stars for a very long time. But once the items came off trade hold and a chunk of players started dumping them early out of habit, before the market could get saturated, the situation turned out bigger than anyone expected: supply badly outpaced demand. Prices fell well below the forecasts, and the launch ROI became one of the lowest in the entire history of the Armory Pass.
Which raises the obvious question: are these long-awaited collections just going to stay cheap and unwanted? Quite possibly — but, as always, we wouldn’t rush to write them off. The big reason for optimism is that Valve has opened a new call to arms for Workshop artists. This time they’re after one skin collection — Fairy Tales — and two sticker collections: Cryptids and Pop Art. If Valve keeps updating the Armory Pass at this pace, rotations could easily start running six months to a year — and that would be a good thing.
Sure, it feels like too many collections have already been opened and nothing can turn that around. But don’t forget about crafts: it’s entirely possible these items will drain out of circulation at a comparable rate. On top of that, plenty of players won’t be watching any of this closely — most only catch the first headline, and right now that headline says one thing: investing in these collections isn’t worth it. Because of that, the number of openings could drop off sharply, and over time the picture should even out and settle closer to the earlier collections.
As always, we’re keeping a finger on the pulse and tracking everything as it unfolds. The easy way to do the same is with SIH bookmarks — drop the items you care about in there so you’ve got quick access and never lose sight of how their prices are moving.
Fruits And Veggies Stickers
Let’s get to the stickers themselves, starting with the fruits and veggies. We’ll be honest: at first glance this collection looked like the more interesting of the two, and compared to Valve’s recent capsule made with Paramount, it turned out fairly light on wear-based Easter eggs. But the artwork itself looks genuinely cool and fresh.
- Price: $0.33
A slick, Fruit Ninja–style sticker that grabs your eye from the first second thanks to that punchy holo shimmer. It’ll drop perfectly into purple-themed loadouts, and the scratched version is a lock for sticker crafts — a blade slicing through fruit pairs beautifully with the “cutting” artwork on plenty of skins.
Sticker | Dragon Fruit (Foil)
- Price: $2.23
Dragon Lore, Dragonfruit — the wordplay basically wrote itself, and the Steam Workshop was flooded with puns just like it. Valve went with this one, and it lands well. And the dragon here reads as more than just a nod to the legendary sniper: the silhouette easily doubles as the golden dragon from the Cobblestone mural, only reborn as a pitaya. Scratch the sticker off completely and you’re left with just a fragment of the dragon’s body — which will help pull off some interesting combinations with other stickers down the line.
- Price: $3.39
We couldn’t skip the red-tier stickers, but honestly — this one’s pretty weak. It’s hard to imagine much demand for it at all. Sure, it’s a fun sticker, but rare it almost certainly won’t be. The text looks like it’s Japanese, and that’s not the kind of thing that pulls support from Chinese fans, who love to back content in their own language.
The word itself is 「うるさい」 (urusai): “shut up,” “noisy,” “give it a rest,” “you’re so annoying.” On stickers and fan art it’s usually used in exactly the “shut up!” or “you’re driving me nuts!” sense — which, you have to admit, suits an angry pepper wielding a shotgun.
- Price: $6.71
Now this one — treating some character to a spinning slice of pizza — will slot into all kinds of sticker crafts. Just don’t show it to any Italians, who don’t forgive pineapple on pizza. The demand is already baked into the price: it’s twice what the collection’s previous red sticker goes for. The lenticular spin reads cleanly and works both as a standalone accent and inside combos.
- Price: $0.97
Our favorite of the bunch — it’ll look great on just about any weapon, especially if you place it right. It’s the same effect as one of those classic desktop wallpapers where you want to shoo the fly off your screen — except now it’s parked on your gun and it isn’t going anywhere. Fittingly, you can’t even scratch it off: your only option is to remove the sticker entirely. That one annoying fly, impossible to swat.
Auto Racing
This collection feels like the stronger of the two, largely thanks to the red-tier bangers people are going to chase. But there’s a flip side: the harder they get chased, the more they get opened — which means their prices land a little lower.
- Price: $0.01
We’re using this sticker to show the full scale of what’s happening with prices on the new collections. In the very first days of sales it’s already going for the lowest price physically possible. And whether anyone will actually slap this many of them on their guns is a big question too. We’ll see — but stickers, specifically, are the ones with the dimmest outlook; the hope that skin crafting evens things out is at least still alive on the skin side. And we can’t move on without pointing out the nod to Need for Speed, the iconic racer that’s found a home in our beloved CS too.
- Price: $0.52
What drew us in most was the scratched version, where all that’s left is the keys and half the ring — those will fit right into some future crafts. And metallic stickers just look stunning in CS2, so it earns attention on that count as well.
- Price: $5.96
The spinning wheel looks fantastic on any weapon — both on its own and paired with skin artwork or other stickers. It’s simple and, more importantly, it just makes sense: which is exactly how we like it. One of those cases where the idea needs no explanation — it clicks the instant you see it.
- Price: $6.02
When we first wrote about this one, we were sure Valve wouldn’t pass it up — and for several reasons. There’s the retro reference the devs clearly love (remember the Tamagotchi from the last collection), plus a genuinely well-executed lenticular effect. And on top of all that, it’s tied into the game’s own lore (the C4). The sticker simply has no weak spots, so its place in the collection is well earned — and the artist walked away with his $6,000.
- Price: $14.75
When this one first showed up in the Steam Workshop, absolutely everyone was talking about it — and how perfectly it fit the collection’s theme was impossible to ignore. Granted, we had our doubts about whether Valve would add it: the devs usually aren’t fans of too much hype building around a Workshop piece. But we’re glad they didn’t push back and gave people exactly what they’d been hoping to see. That’s a good sign for skin makers and for all of us: Valve is listening!
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.
