Why are keys going down, hats going up?

[tomnx]

Umm, I have quited tf2 long time, but I still come here to look at price suggestions, and what changed in prices, and I see that keys

going down, hats going up.

 

 

 

Wat is happening?

Why is that happening?

[Scott Bakula]

Hats are going up because of the general devaluation of refined. We're actually almost at the point where using refined to craft hats will become worth while, instead of 2 hats.

 

As for keys, it's a whirling cocktail of undercutters, two major game releases (GTA V and Mortal Kombat), panic, and good old-fashioned human stupidity. The trend will eventually reverse itself, as it always does.

[tomnx]

Hats are going up because of the general devaluation of refined. We're actually almost at the point where using refined to craft hats will become worth while, instead of 2 hats.

 

As for keys, it's a whirling cocktail of undercutters, two major game releases (GTA V and Mortal Kombat), panic, and good old-fashioned human stupidity. The trend will eventually reverse itself, as it always does.

Hm ok I see, I thought the gta 5 and MK10 hype only applied to csgo.

[zirune]

Other items lag behind refined and keys. Any one particular item will be updated at a fraction of the rate of refined and keys; keys might have gone from 16 to 20 refined in the time it took that one random item to be updated once. This is very obvious when you compared marketable sub-key items' values in refined and on the Community Market; when keys were at 20 refined, there were tons of items you could buy for refined, sell on the Community Market for $3+, buy keys, trade those keys for refined, and come out with a profit.

 

If you look at a lot of the pricing graphs for a lot of marketable items (sub-key Genuines and Winter/Summer Limited cosmetics in particular), they spiked in price suddenly relatively recently. If you look at the suggestions, a lot of them have buyers (myself included) that were part of the reason for the price increases. I didn't pay particular attention to keeping my prices up-to-date, but I could have updated them every couple of days with each new suggestion if I wanted to... The profit would be smaller, but certainly still there. A similar idea is true for non-marketable items, but since there isn't a direct route to profit, they won't have as much demand or have new price suggestions created as rapidly.

 

As people caught on to this, demand for refined went up. When there's room for profit like this using metal, eventually there'll be a point where either all of these items catch up or keys start going back down in refined value... And as I said before, everything else lags behind keys and refined, meaning these items won't realistically be able to catch up. So, naturally, once there's a large enough gap for profit and enough people trying to take advantage of that gap, it'll reach that point where keys start going back down.

 

After that, of course, people love to over-react and panic. If they see 20 refined having a hard time selling, they start to worry that they're going to lose value by holding onto their keys, so they sell at 19.88. People see that, and start selling at 19.77. Combine this with some not-so-subtle manipulation (http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/34919-maybe-manipulation/) to try and lower the prices, and it's pretty easy for that old 20 refined price to drop down to 19 and further.

 

It also has absolutely nothing to do with GTA V or Mortal Kombat, I can tell you that. If anything, big game releases would increase the demand for keys, not refined, and thus their value would increase, not decrease. Keys are widely accepted by traders and can be sold on the Community Market, both of which are easy avenues to buying or trading for a new game. Refined doesn't have an easy path like that, other than through keys.

[♠Derpeh♤]

It also has absolutely nothing to do with GTA V or Mortal Kombat, I can tell you that. If anything, big game releases would increase the demand for keys, not refined, and thus their value would increase, not decrease. Keys are widely accepted by traders and can be sold on the Community Market, both of which are easy avenues to buying or trading for a new game. Refined doesn't have an easy path like that, other than through keys.

Not entirely true, a lot of people end up dumping their items on scm which drive prices down in anticipation for sales/releases both cs:go and tf2 economy dropped to the same time when GTA V was released. Users dump items in reference for cash, while it is true that demand for keys go up it can't be compared the the much larger amount of people unloading their items for cash not to mention the large amout of users who entered the market for the sole purpose of dumping their stuff to buy games.

[❤ΣκαπανέαςGr❤]

Hats are going up because of the general devaluation of refined. We're actually almost at the point where using refined to craft hats will become worth while, instead of 2 hats.

 

As for keys, it's a whirling cocktail of undercutters, two major game releases (GTA V and Mortal Kombat), panic, and good old-fashioned human stupidity. The trend will eventually reverse itself, as it always does.

you make no sense. if there was a massive demand for keys so they can buy games keys would rise in price cause demand will rise.

 

the truth lies to scrap.tf geel bought 10 hat with 1 key now gell sells 6 hats for 1 key and thats all there is about key prices. since bankers follow scrap.tf prices for banking as well.

he made a recent try to stabilize the price buy buyng and selling for the same price but ppl are still panic and continuous the undercuts.

is either that or there is huge demand for ref you chose.

 

I should add to that that keys are the easiest asset to manipulate and more profitable.as you can do just that with just 50-100 keys which is nothing really. and use alts to undercut everyone and then buy the panic sellers out with your remaining ref.

 

bp.tf classifieds are not flawless. the only thing that could save keys of being a manipulation tool would be if bp.tf allowed ref listings which they don't for reasons I still don't understand. even though that ref listing would actually help new traders to do their quickbuying trades.But might be a threat for scrap.tf and the craft hat price in general which I think it wouldn't.

 

thats my 5 cents

[Scott Bakula]

you make no sense. if there was a massive demand for keys so they can buy games keys would rise in price cause demand will rise.

 

You're assuming the average Joe is directly trading keys for games. They aren't. Instead, as stated above, they dump them on the SCM for quick funds, and since they want them to sell fast, they undercut everyone else. Then, people see the overall drop on SCM and go into panic mode thinking keys are dropping and in their panic create an actual drop.

[❤ΣκαπανέαςGr❤]

You're assuming the average Joe is directly trading keys for games. They aren't. Instead, as stated above, they dump them on the SCM for quick funds, and since they want them to sell fast, they undercut everyone else. Then, people see the overall drop on SCM and go into panic mode thinking keys are dropping and in their panic create an actual drop.

lol you are talking about the scm drop.that makes sense.

yeah games can be a factor when comes to that. but thats like a 1-2 day hype unless summer sales. so  buds must had the same luck this weekend right!.going to check.

[AiR²³]

Huge demand for ref... thanks for the good laugh.

[Tats]

Some items are only available from crates (limited editions), so when new cosmetics were released, the demand for keys increased. It combined with the big steam sales period.

After the hype period, people massively sold their items which devalued the price of these items : they sold it in refined (less than a key). Keys went down a bit (not much, because people still bought games from keys).

 

Rapidly, traders bought these cheap items and their value began to increase due to speculation. Refined metal regained of its value but speculation kept the keys going up more rapidly than refined metal = slight decrease of refined metal because expressed in keys.

 

When the bubble stopped at 20 refined, keys suddenly dropped from 20 ref to 18 ref, and now it's about 16.33 ref. If keys dropped at the current value of 16 refined in such a short period of time, it is because they were overpriced and will now settle at their real value = or in the other sense, refined metal will catch up so as to reach its real value expressed in keys. Some items (from limited crates) that are appreciated beyond their speculative interest have substantially increased in value : for the majority of them, they still worth less than a key, so you buy them on the SCM or for refined (you don't buy keys but rather sell them for metal). On the same side, refined metal price has dropped a lot, and some items are now catching up and see their price in refined metal going up. 

 

Changes such as sales period, crates releases, etc, create disturbance on the global market. It needs quite a long time for the market to adjust, generally, it doesn't have enough time to adjust before new disturbance.