New record capitalization of skins at $4.277 billion. Are skins more reliable than Bitcoin? Let’s analyze what you can invest in in the near future.
The skin market in Counter-Strike 2 continues to develop rapidly, confirming its attractiveness as an alternative investment instrument. According to Bloomberg, since the beginning of 2024, the value of digital items in CS2 has grown faster than the S&P 500 index, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. Recently, a new record was set – the total trading volume of skins reached $4.3 billion. If you’ve been following items on the marketplace for a long time, it’s not difficult to notice that they have been steadily growing in price not only this year but throughout the game’s history. This is especially noticed by people who return to their abandoned accounts after some time, check their inventory, and are surprised that some items are significantly more expensive than they remembered. If you’re one of these players, go to Steam to search for treasures.
The main price jump occurred during the transition to CS2, when all skins were transferred to the new version of the game, which marked a new chapter in the shooter’s history that will exist for a long time. There were also specific cases where some items began to look much more interesting with the transition to the improved Source 2 engine.
Currently, there are many different items in the in-game store, so we decided to reflect on their future value. Let’s try to think through several scenarios, based on the current situation and experience from past events.
Arsenal Operation Items
There are currently 66 new weapon finishes from the Arsenal update in the game. Three collections: Overpass 2024, “The Graphic Design Collection”, “The Sport & Field Collection” as well as the “Gallery Case.” While items from past collections showed serious growth some time after their completion, the current situation here is quite ambiguous.
First, VALVE does not reveal to us even approximate dates for the end of the event, which makes any forecasts merely hypothetical. Second, unlike past operations, this event has a modified item acquisition mechanic. Now you cannot purchase “stars” for real money, and developers, in addition to purchasing a pass, force you to play to earn in-game currency. At first, this worked well, but after almost half a year, audience interest has waned, and players have returned to FACEIT and other third-party servers. For this reason, far fewer items have been appearing in the game, and they are practically not dropping in price. So what will happen to them next?
Why the collection should increase in value:
- Items still won’t appear in large quantities due to the lost interest of players. This means their already limited circulation will not change.
- To bring back active users, developers will release new collections within the current Arsenal event, while the current ones will become limited.
- Any other sudden termination of the event or closure of access to the collection.
What might prevent Arsenal event items from growing in value:
- The implementation of a substantial discount on the pass, more specifically – how long this discount will be in effect and whether it will be able to restore player demand.
- Infinite duration of the event. There are rumors that this is quite a realistic outcome.
Charms
Moving on to the newest type of items in the game. The community had been waiting for the appearance of charms for a very long time, but the reaction to the presented models was ambiguous. This item left no one indifferent, and made players either fall in love with or categorically reject the new accessory.
As for future prices, over time our vision has changed somewhat. Initially, it seemed that the ability to apply and remove a charm at any moment would completely kill all hopes for growth, but time has shown that their prices have not changed. At the moment, this can be attributed to the general trend of all skins from the Arsenal update, but we have a couple of additional arguments for why charms might become more expensive in the future:
- Analogy with agents. They also cannot be used in crafts or somehow disappear from the game, which did not prevent them from significantly increasing in price. Although skeptics will say that a significant percentage of growth is associated with the general boost of all items after the transition to CS2.
- The presence of rare patterns. It would seem that the collection is transparent, but almost every charm has at least four varieties that differ in color or other pattern change parameter. It turns out that there are even fewer items of a specific “type” than shown on the marketplace.
Stickers
Here everything is quite simple, and you can be guided by the experience of past stickers from operations. When a sticker is applied, it cannot be removed, so after each application, they rapidly disappear from the marketplace. Given the actively developing fashion for sticker crafts, demand for them is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. It is especially impossible to ignore the number of ideas implemented with stickers from the Arsenal collections, which makes their potential scarcity almost inevitable.
Shanghai Major Items
The tournament ended last year, but we can still purchase stickers and souvenir containers from any of the matches of the main VALVE tournament. In fact, everyone has already gotten used to such huge periods of access to tournament attributes, so this fact does not cause surprise.
The main question: what will happen to prices? Here, everything is extremely unpredictable, and it is worth delving more deeply into the number of purchased capsules and sets. But one thing can be said for sure – the design turned out to be completely unimpressive and barely distinguishable from the previous Major. Traditionally, it would hardly be a mistake to stock up on stickers of unpopular teams that are unlikely to ever make it to a Major again. However, you need to understand that the demand for these stickers is not so great, so don’t expect a huge profit from this investment. Many pay attentions to player autographs, considering that this time the developers made the signatures themselves more expressive.
As for souvenir packages, the best way to make money on them is to guess the map that will be next to be removed from the map pool. For example, the Vertigo container, after replacement with Train, has already increased in price by 30%.
What can you invest in on the marketplace?
Finally, let’s talk about items that have been in the game a little longer and which of them could become a good investment. To jump ahead, we’ll clarify that these items have already given their main boost, which is why they have already grown to far from small sums.
First of all, we’re talking about items from the latest operations: Riptide and Broken Fang cases, as well as collections: Train 2021, Mirage 2021, Dust 2 2021, Vertigo 2021, Ancient, Chaos, and Control. You can also pay attention to items from even older operations, but the main take should revolve around the fact that items have been removed from active drop. Thus, after numerous crafts, items from the collection will disappear, accordingly becoming more rare. The cost of such skins will definitely not decrease in any way, with the exception of potential risks that will affect absolutely the entire market.
IMPORTANT – all thoughts are subjective and not financial advice. Also, it is worth remembering that when withdrawing to real money, you should understand that the price may differ from Steam both in greater and lesser value. Therefore, with any manipulations with your items, be extremely careful, especially if you do not have enough experience and knowledge in this matter.
