I’m sure you’ve seen these ridiculous headlines about skins from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive selling for five or even six-digit prices and wondered: “How are they so expensive and who is buying them?”. Well, it’s your lucky day!

I’ll help to explain and break down the basics of these virtual skins, how they work and why some of them are so expensive.

What Are CS:GO Skins?

Counter-Strike is an iconic series, credited as the father of the tactical first-person shooter genre ever since it was released all the way back in 2000. The game was gritty and realistic, with the gameplay and maps being the main focus of the main aesthetic. In fact, virtual skins were not a thing in any of these games until August 2013, when the Arms Deal update for CS:GO was released.

CS:GO skins are in-game items that change the appearance of your weapons, gloves, character or melee weapon. These are entirely visual and do not affect gameplay at all, but they are seen as a unique way to express yourself and your personality in your skin collection. There are two main ways to obtain skins, which are either in match drops or via cases. Every active map in CS:GO has a specific collection of skins that are linked to that map. Match drops occur once a week, you can either receive a random case or random skin from the collection of the map you were playing. Level-up rewards are sprays, and individual skins by themselves.

Skins have different rarity grades, which dictate how hard they are to get from their various sources. These range from the most basic Consumer Grade skins to the flashy Extraordinary Grade Knives and Gloves, which are the rarest. While there are additional special grades, these are the most basic and commonly used rarity grades of skins.

I’m sure that you are somewhat familiar with gacha and case openings as they have become a staple in modern gaming, especially mobile gaming, with microtransactions everywhere. Case openings in CS:GO work in the same way, where you can pay to open a case that you own and receive a random skin from the case’s collection, in a random condition rating. Generally, this rarity is the biggest factor that determines a basic skin’s price, however, the factors that really raise the price are yet to come.

What Makes Them Expensive?

The first important factor in the price of skins is simple supply and demand. If a lot of people want a specific skin, the price will likely go up. If the supply of that skin is low, such as a rarer skin in good condition, the people who want to buy that skin will likely pay even more. Generally, the most expensive normal skins are in good condition and are hard to get, which leads to those who want it to pay extra.

Scarcity is a rarer factor, but this can affect some specific skins, such as the infamous M4A4 Howl. This skin had to be removed from the cases as the artwork was found to be stolen, but the skin still remained in the game, just unobtainable from then on. This caused the price of the skin to absolutely skyrocket, being worth well over US$3,000 today. There are also rare variants and patterns that affect the way that the skin appears, with some patterns being extremely rare and valuable due to what they look like.

The most famous examples of this include the Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and Black Pearl patterns of the Doppler knives and the Blue Gem Case Hardened skins. In fact, the most expensive skin sold publicly was a Blue Gem pattern AK-47 Case Hardened, which sold for a staggering US$400,000 in April 2023.

The final factor that tends to add value to skins is rare stickers. Stickers are an additional cosmetic that you can put on your guns to add some personality to them. However, some stickers are either extremely rare or discontinued and thus have a lot of value behind them.

Stickers from the Katowice 2014 tournament are the most expensive by far, as they came from a tournament riddled with drama, scandals and most importantly, disqualified teams. The two most important of these are the Titan stickers, specifically the Holo variant. Titan has since defunct as an organisation, meaning these stickers were the last of the team’s logos to exist. Generally, these add a lot of value as they have a meaning behind them, and they are extremely rare. A rare or valuable skin with these stickers on them can boost the price even more and a lot of collectors adore skins with these stickers.

For example, let’s take a look at the most expensive AK-47 skin in the game. The first and most important part is that it is the best pattern for a Case Hardened AK-47, which is pattern 661. This alone makes it extremely rare and expensive as it is a 1 in 1000 chance to occur and is valued at roughly US$150,000 or so, but there are quite a few more factors that make it this pricey.

Another example is StatTrak, which is a rarer variant of skins that allows you to track kills earn with that gun. On top of that, it is also in the best condition of this pattern ever found, being in Minimal Wear, which is the second-highest wear condition in the game. To add the cherry on top, it has a total of four Katowice 2014 Titan Holo stickers, which are the second most expensive stickers in the game, totalling US$77,000 by themselves. The collector who bought this skin has multiple skins worth five to six digits, with a massive private inventory, likely saving them for when Counter-Strike 2 comes out fully soon.

Who is even buying them?

Speaking of collectors, you may also have asked “Who is even buying these?”. Generally, there are three kinds of people who actively buy skins. You have traders, who trade skins around to gain value and build up their inventory. There are professional players, who love to buy/borrow/rent extremely expensive and rare skins to use on stage and there are collectors who own those rare skins to lend to them.

Interestingly, most collectors seem to be from China, throwing insanely high price tags around to get full collections of skins. A lot of them have private collections, using middlemen to purchase their skins and helping to strike deals for them. There are quite a few Chinese collectors with inventories worth over US$1,000,000 that are filled with rare skins, knives and gloves.

Conclusion

I hope this helped to give some insight into virtual skins in CS:GO, how they work and why some of them are so damn expensive! There are many layers to the world of skin collecting and trading, in many different games, but generally, they all work in the same way: they use supply, demand and rarity to determine prices. Don’t let this scare you out of using skins though! Everyone who plays CS:GO has owned a skin or two at some point and most people use skins to express themselves or to flex their expensive collections while playing the game.

There are plenty of affordable skins to choose from that can let you express yourself without breaking the bank, which I honestly find the most fun. Even if you are a casual player, if CS:GO is a game you play often, you should look into getting some skins to add some spice to your visuals.