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Near all hat values decreasing


shadowfoxface

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It always saddens me to be looking through classifieds on backpack.tf or listings anywhere else to find 1-3 of the super large traders selling an unusual for dirt cheap. Every time they do this, any seller of the hat needs to somehow compete with such a significantly lower price than the hat's real value.

 

Depicted below is the poor circling heart familiar fez. Chopper actually undercut himself on a listing for one of his hats to be the lowest seller of the item. Debug is at least at the lowest suggested value for the items, but I imagine the familiar fez will be dropping in price soon due to the biggest, and most interacted with, traders on the website.

 

I'm fully aware anyone may trade their items however they want, but I just wanted to bring it up since it seems like no one else does.

 

I would consider the situation to be different if numerous traders each sold a different item for a discount/quicksell price as they are simply in the market to obtain pure and trade further. When 3-6 major people due it though, that is just utter destruction of the unusual economy.

 

Natural falls in hat value are completely expected with the mass of unusuals brought into the game weekly, but that does not mean every hat with every effect except hyper-high-tiers should be dropping as dramatically as they do.

 

You can agree with my, call me an idiot, or whatever you please, but I have not seen one person bring this up yet and it seems to be a glaring issue that should be discussed whether we can control it or not.

Screen Shot 2017-09-17 at 7.21.49 AM.png

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I don't see any problem with this bot asking for pure keys,  unusual not really sell for pure keys, they are selling for other unu/mixed. But unfurtunatly price sugestion for some reason can lower item base on pure sale, that mean if bot sale item for 21 keys which was priced 27. Price can easy be change to 21 keys. After that bot will start reselling for 19 pure, and another sugestion can come out to lower it for 19 keys. A lot of hats get dropped by 60% in previous months.

Reason why you think high tier are more stable is becasue they have less sellers and practically never sell for pure. but they can be lowered pretty heavily even for 50% if someone make sugestion on it: https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5992f501cf6c755683601d83

So in my personal opinion (when you said that everything decreasing in value) its not sellers fault it's fault of old bp.tf sugestion rule.

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It's not an issue. It's probably actually a good thing for the economy.

 

You know what an unhealthy economy does? It stagnates. What's actually happening in real terms is not that the price of unusuals are dropping, but the price of keys is rising (it's hard to see this sometimes because keys are updated fairly regularly whereas unusuals are updating MAXIMUM once every three months.) What's the best indicator of a strong economy? A strong currency. I could go on like this for hours but the tl;dr is the fact unusuals like this are dropping means the economy is alive and well. I've seen it plenty in the few years I've been doing this.

 

@ Piotrex, backpack.tf price ARE in pure, that's the point. A bot would sell for more if the owner thought it could get more, but it doesn't because they don't. Anything that's being kept high by unusual sales is probably over-inflated: why do you think "overpay in items" is a thing.

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24 minutes ago, Gent♥ said:

It's not an issue. It's probably actually a good thing for the economy.

 

You know what an unhealthy economy does? It stagnates. What's actually happening in real terms is not that the price of unusuals are dropping, but the price of keys is rising (it's hard to see this sometimes because keys are updated fairly regularly whereas unusuals are updating MAXIMUM once every three months.) What's the best indicator of a strong economy? A strong currency. I could go on like this for hours but the tl;dr is the fact unusuals like this are dropping means the economy is alive and well. I've seen it plenty in the few years I've been doing this.

 

@ Piotrex, backpack.tf price ARE in pure, that's the point. A bot would sell for more if the owner thought it could get more, but it doesn't because they don't. Anything that's being kept high by unusual sales is probably over-inflated: why do you think "overpay in items" is a thing.

Actually, it's not. Price of keys remains consistent. Rather, the price of unusuals are being forced down. See:the german property market.
It means unusuals are depreciating with a shelf life, and it will kill tf2 unusual trading for low-mid tier effects. Monetary economics bachelor degree here btw.

The only way is to either force bots out of the market, hence reducing liquidity and preventing the decline in price, or force a few high tier traders out the market, making it possible for low/mid tier players to profit.

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"A bot would sell for more if the owner thought it could get more"- well i can't agree with that - that's the whole idea of those bots, selling below "full" prices so it gets sold quicker and buyers see it as a "good deal" so are more likely to pay the price in pure. Also most of those bot owners probably dont even care how much more they could get for it, they simply check the current suggested price and take some % off it.

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Example:
If i get 50 pure keys for one of my unusual (worth 65 keys on bp.tf) price can drop to 50 keys.

But if i get 70 keys unusual for my 65 key unusual price can rise.

For sure i prefer 50 pure keys its a lot better offer and with this 50 keys i can easily buy 80 keys unu. So I really don't understand how anyone can say this system should work like this.

If you saying that bp.tf price is price in pure why anyone will be even quickselling anything, if hat on bp.tf is worth exaclly what should be worth in pure keys/cash.

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Most unusuals are overpriced. While bp.tf tries to price in pure, 90% of hats could never sell for there bp.tf price in pure. People discount them for pure, and then the price goes down. There is also the problem of the sheer insane amount of unusuals in existence, and growing, while the number of people with pure keys to buy hats remains constant. As for the Heart Fez you use in your example, it may of been desirable 3 years ago, but these days it is very undesirable as you can get way better unusuals for that price: i.e why would you get a Heart Spy hat when you can get a Starstorm All-Class for less. 

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5 hours ago, Gent♥ said:

It's not an issue. It's probably actually a good thing for the economy.

 

You know what an unhealthy economy does? It stagnates. What's actually happening in real terms is not that the price of unusuals are dropping, but the price of keys is rising (it's hard to see this sometimes because keys are updated fairly regularly whereas unusuals are updating MAXIMUM once every three months.) What's the best indicator of a strong economy? A strong currency. I could go on like this for hours but the tl;dr is the fact unusuals like this are dropping means the economy is alive and well. I've seen it plenty in the few years I've been doing this.

 

@ Piotrex, backpack.tf price ARE in pure, that's the point. A bot would sell for more if the owner thought it could get more, but it doesn't because they don't. Anything that's being kept high by unusual sales is probably over-inflated: why do you think "overpay in items" is a thing.

 

I would actually have to disagree with this pretty heavily. The USD price of keys has actually gone down recently, primarily due to key selling for Tip of the Hats. Other than that, key prices have remained relatively static from ~1.75-1.95 depending on where you buy/sell and time. Keys rising in price does not account for unusuals dropping in price as heavily as they are now.

 

Regarding the current situation, there are multiple people to blame:

  1. Undercutting: there is no real way to "fix" this, I do it myself a shitton and its just a fact of life.
  2. BP prices are for pure, but people never buy for BP prices in pure. This is probably one of the big killers of prices, because people almost never buy unusuals for BP price with a few exceptions. Then whenever a pure sale happens it just makes a continually downward cycle because noone ever pays the full price in pure, suggestions are made to lower, rinse and repeat.
  3. Buyout capping. Buyout capping really fucks hats rising, because then if people overpay on hats its still capped at the pure buyout, which tends to be lower than the current BP price.
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7 hours ago, Gent♥ said:

It's not an issue. It's probably actually a good thing for the economy.

 

You know what an unhealthy economy does? It stagnates. What's actually happening in real terms is not that the price of unusuals are dropping, but the price of keys is rising (it's hard to see this sometimes because keys are updated fairly regularly whereas unusuals are updating MAXIMUM once every three months.) What's the best indicator of a strong economy? A strong currency. I could go on like this for hours but the tl;dr is the fact unusuals like this are dropping means the economy is alive and well. I've seen it plenty in the few years I've been doing this.

 

@ Piotrex, backpack.tf price ARE in pure, that's the point. A bot would sell for more if the owner thought it could get more, but it doesn't because they don't. Anything that's being kept high by unusual sales is probably over-inflated: why do you think "overpay in items" is a thing.

 

If the economy really crashed, it would send key prices through the roof, as everyone would be trying to liquidate their inventories, converting into keys and then selling keys for cash or SCM.  So rising key prices aren't necessarily a sign of a strong economy.  Obviously inflation is present in all strong economies, but to a small, more or less controlled degree.  That actually applies here as well, keys used to gain value at a much lower speed than they do now.  

 

I'm not saying the sky is about to fall, but I would argue that the reason why most hats are dropping [most items in fact] is because they're tougher to sell.  Back when buds were 20 keys, a 5 bud hat like a clean GE Hustler could actually get close to a 100 keys, because the demand was that high.  Today, the demand has gone down a lot, so a GE hustler can barely get  40 keys. It's not like the actual monetary value of the hat has remained constant, the price in USD has dropped by more than half.

 

I see an accelerated rise in keys as more of a warning sign.  When things are shakey in an economy, one of the safer things to do is put your money in gold, because it's nice and stable.  Same here, when the TF economy isn't doing well and people are starting to get uneasy, they get into 'cash out ready' positions, and the best way to do that is with keys.  Likewise, demand for items further drops, because nobody is willing to part with their pure for items, since they know a 20 key hat isn't as easy to liquidate as 20 keys.

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5 hours ago, Xergoyf said:

Most unusuals are overpriced. While bp.tf tries to price in pure, 90% of hats could never sell for there bp.tf price in pure. People discount them for pure, and then the price goes down. There is also the problem of the sheer insane amount of unusuals in existence, and growing, while the number of people with pure keys to buy hats remains constant. As for the Heart Fez you use in your example, it may of been desirable 3 years ago, but these days it is very undesirable as you can get way better unusuals for that price: i.e why would you get a Heart Spy hat when you can get a Starstorm All-Class for less. 

The ability to buy keys and increase the amt in the market is more probable than the amt of people able to unbox unusuals using said keys.

As such, the market would just have ppl stacking pure and ppl having unusuals fall and fall until........noone sells their unusuals below pure price. The pure market bottoms out and pure becomes effectively worthless, unusuals would increase insanely in value. See: Germany's hyperinflation after WWI. Unusuals are a rare resource, keys are common, refined even more so.

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12 hours ago, RED265 said:

The ability to buy keys and increase the amt in the market is more probable than the amt of people able to unbox unusuals using said keys.

As such, the market would just have ppl stacking pure and ppl having unusuals fall and fall until........noone sells their unusuals below pure price. The pure market bottoms out and pure becomes effectively worthless, unusuals would increase insanely in value. See: Germany's hyperinflation after WWI. Unusuals are a rare resource, keys are common, refined even more so.

The difference is that keys and unusuals are intrinsically linked so this can't happen. If keys were worthless and unusuals valuable, people would just use keys to unbox.

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1 hour ago, Axle Change said:

The difference is that keys and unusuals are intrinsically linked so this can't happen. If keys were worthless and unusuals valuable, people would just use keys to unbox.

Theoretically, this would work if and only if all previous unusuals were unboxable. EOTL/halloween/robo effects, being unable to be unboxed, have would still be subject to the rarity inflation. So, even sunbeams, etc may fall in price to spellbound/frostbite

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Partly why I got out of trading, or have been getting out of it, anyways. Too many buyers, too many sellers, too much work for too little profit. It was very easy for me to make 1400 keys (pure value, not backpack.tf graph) in a month trading but I'd have to work much harder for it now. The market has changed.

 

Back around June I looked over some values and I estimated Unusuals are worth 15% less (NOT backpack.tf price, what they actually sell for) than they were in March. I based this on SCM average values (for example it's not uncommon to find Unusuals for <$20 on the market when they used to never go below $23), what I buy and sell Unusuals for, as well as what sellers and buyers list their prices at. 15% was a rough guess, so don't take it too seriously. The point is, there is a clear decline in value from what I've looked at. People don't want to buy Unusuals for as much as they used to.

 

I would say around March/April was when Unusuals were valued highest this year and that it's mostly gone down somewhere after May/April. Though this is partly based on my personal experience. The only Unusuals that haven't really been declining in value are certain limited effect Unusuals (some Halloween, Frostbite), but they are a very small part of the Unusual market (you could probably say less than 5%).

 

Valve seems pretty committed to bringing down the value of Unusuals, too. Starting with the release of generation-agnostic crates (hurt the stability of 1st gens), multi-class crates (devastated the high-tier economy), doubled the Unusual unbox rate last Halloween (we all know how flooded the market is with cheap Halloween 2016 Unusuals), introduced the Unusualifier (destroyed the once very strong taunt market), and are now considering re-introducing Unusualifiers as a bonus item as well as a few other changes.


There isn't really a way to make Unusuals worth more other than make people want to buy Unusuals more. TF2's a fun game and all, but how much do people really want to pour their money into it? Personally, Unusuals for what they are have always seemed to be a poor value. A 60-key hat you buy for full-price could end up setting you back around $100-$150 depending on your method of buying. $100-$150 is a lot of money for a virtual item. Is it really worth it to most people? Even if you make decent money, probably not. Though you're also able to re-sell what you buy to get your money back and a lot of people don't seem to realize this ("you waste your money on virtual items?").

 

New traders struggle to compete with old-time traders and bots. Prices stagnate, they can't even trade up to a key. They get frustrated and quit (so many people have no patience). I've had 2 friends that wanted to get into trading and even gave them a small loan of 100 keys. They both ended up giving up after maybe a week. People continue to leave and the number of new traders doesn't grow as much as it used to. People complain about bots, but it's a free market and bots aren't going anywhere. TF2 is not the only game with an economy flooded with bots. In an extreme case, bots will become so evolved that the only traders left will be bots that trade with other bots.


People often point to TF2's player count to say the game is alive and well, but really, is that number real or inflated by bots? A few months back I giftapulted 100 items. Most of the gifts, over half if I can remember correctly, were sent to obvious bot accounts (their names followed a similar pattern). If you play the game you'd notice servers aren't as active as they used to be. New games come out, people get bored of the same old, and people move on.

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February to October have always been the weakest months for TF2 trading, especially with the pre-Halloween + start of school swoon from July to September. Values of most items, not just unusuals, go down significantly and trading is typically at its slowest. This is also when for the last 8 years people claim the economy is crashing. This has happened without fail at the same time every single year. Halloween brings back a lot of players and Christmas money brings in a huge influx of spending money on virtual items. Trading stays hard with all the new unusuals right after halloween but the combination of returning players and Christmas money makes trading best around Christmas. 

 

Keep in mind, the average unusual value has always and will always continue to go down in value. The number of people playing the game isn't changing much but the number of unusuals getting unboxed will continue to rise. 

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I love how people say obviosly things which everyone know (trading is hard,take time, game is old,virtual items are hard to sell,really big competition,) just to quite everyone who say things against system. Because doesn't matter how much proof you will write against it, there are always people who will stand with it. 
Bp.tf sugestion rule ruining tf economy, lowering everything base on pure sale\cash will end up that every hats which was recently sold for pure keys/money geting lowered.
Someone buy something from marketplace where he can read -15% off acctual price, after he bought it price is changing base on what he pay.  So where is this -15% which was promise by marketplace is it was scamm? Same with bp.tf deal future after he bought it for keys price geting lowered. What about all decriptions like: "quickselling for pure"(someone selling for lower to get keys) since he didn't sell it immediately price is geting lowered to the price he paid for it.. For me person who paid keys for it was kinda sharked, this whole quicksell descriptions was a lie.

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