All Activity

I have been trading for almost 12 years now. I just go on trade servers that I frequent such as Vatican City and The Global Paradise. I search for deals by utilizing backpack.tf forums, stn.tf, discords, and through friends and peers as well. Sometimes it's really luck just right place right time. I usually just track things from my backpack compares. I know some friends who have spreadsheets to calculate things, but I personally just track things through backpack.tf. For me I consider looking at past sales whether it's from a price suggestion or from sister effects. I have done my fair share of hard buys, but I have also done my fair share of good flips. It really comes down to buy low and sell high to be honest. For me when I know it's time to take the L is that there is no margins for the items. When that happens, it's best to just dump it. As a person who's been trading since June 2012, I was never a fan of automation. I know there's perks, but I always preferred trading P2P. It's funner that way imo. For me, it's to be kind and polite when you trade. Not to mention just have fun. Trading is a hobby and it shouldn't be utilized as some 8-5 Job. Anyways that's my advice here. Have fun and good luck with trading, Simple!

Interesting to know. I've played both L4D and L4D2. I have never seen a Golden CrowBar, Fitz.

There are golden crowbars in L4D2... there's even an achievement for finding them all. Super difficult to find them too, if I recall. I think I only ever found one.

wild spelled trader spotted *marks off in little book*

It's not queue cutting because the listing specifies that they are buying spelled variants in the formatting of the item itself. There is no option to select "named only variants" within the structure of the listing process, and it is therefor line/queue cutting. The rule is 100% consistent and absolutely makes sense with the features currently present on backpack.

I'm wondering if the Golden Pan is canon in the L4D series. After all the Golden Pan in TF2 is really just a promo weapon.

I sell stuff for full pure all the time. Sold spectrum + violet doublecross for 55 one the fifth. I sold a chroma + voices brawling buccaneer for 40 pure on the same day. I sold a large luchadore with putrescent a few days before that. I sold a putrescent + voices haunted tuque or treat for 25 the day before that. etc. etc. etc. I did not quicksell any of these items.

I just talk to people in trade servers and develop relationships, those people know to come to me for items. I also list on backpack and just wait for offers. I surf listings on backpack Trade/inventory history and memory Through experience based on past trades and information from other traders. I've literally never had to do this so I don't know. Having automated sections of the TF2 economy is very useful to me, I benefit from it massively despite not participating in automated trading myself.

I almost exclusively trade unusuals so I can only give advice there. Some advice I regularly tend to give is that it's best to buy unusuals based on what they can sell for. Don't buy them based on buy orders (as bots aren't humans who can evaluate a market) or anything else. Bots and classifieds scripts just overcut eachother and will often just re-sell it to the next person on the list. You also shouldn't buy based on %-discounts or simply because someone says it's a quicksale. If someone sells a bag of shit for $10 and they offer it to you for a 90% discount at $1, you could buy it for a big discount, but you'd still have just a bag of shit. Just because it's a big discount compared to either the current bp price, other sellers, the current seller's previous price etc, doesn't mean it is worthwhile. You have to determine what price it can sell for, and then based on a variety of factors, you can determine what price you want to pay i.e. your margin. Factors include, but are not limited to, the desirability of the hat and effect, the risk of undercuts, rarity, sale duration etc. As for your 3rd question, it may be worthwhile to set up and organize a spreadsheet or Excel document. This doesn't have to be very elaborate as you're a TF2 trader and not an accountant, but it provides certain benefits. You can keep track of your inventory and details, you can monitor your profits and losses by registering the sale/sell prices, you can analyse your own purchases and sales to spot potential new trades and trends, you can set goals for yourself etc. Well, for starters, it helps to do research and planning before buying an unusual. What can it sell for, what are the risks... What am I actually buying here? I'll admit that this is pretty tough in the early phase as most traders really just use their experience to judge whether they want to go through with a trade and not some theoretical model. To build experience you kinda just have to get started and be willing to make mistakes from time to time. It can help to join trading discords, talk to other traders, stay up-to-date on the latest news and the ''insider'' tips and tricks. When to cut loose an unusual and dump it is not possible to answer as it depends on so many factors. Sometimes the worst possible unusual sells within a day while the unusual that should be vastly superior (great hat, some halloween effect, empty market etc) takes forever. You have to evaluate from time to time and see if the initial ''plan'' still holds up. If there's 6 sellers below your listed price... well then maybe it's worth looking for opportunities elsewhere. This economy has been partially automated since forever. Scrap.tf has existed since 2013. It's not really that big a deal. There's a reason why bots exist. If you were around in the ''''''good'''''' old days, you'd have to contact a human, wait 16hours, sometimes talk to eachother through a language barrier, then they'd still try to haggle and all that to get a 1.33 ref craft hat. Nowadays it's ~20 seconds and it's yours. Every month or so we get a ''bots are evil'' forum thread here but let's be honest, do you really prefer the first option? Probably not. Bots are around for a reason. Because they're convenient and people use them, supply and demand Good luck trading!

It seems that maybe thats the case in L4D2? Nick avoids the question and says "we aren't infected" or something along those lines... and then they ask if he can board "carriers", so we don't even know what happened to the L4D2 survivors... if they're alive or etc, and also if they were immune, or just asymptomatic as well.

Yeah, I always thought that was a super cool twist. I love the L4D games so much.

Manually trading is 'can I swap my 85 key hat for your 87 key hat' and praying it works, and working up from there. Take items and take mixed because there is NO WAY you're getting full pure unless you quicksell and have some pure already. Searching for deals, I'd suggest STN.tf because they have whack prices and sometimes they're profitable by around 20 keys, I'd suggest sitting on your pc/laptop, opening one tab of each trading site and compare them all to backpack listings, its hard but ive personally enjoyed sifting through listings. If you need full pure, overshoot your standards. E.G hat you want is 50k, aim for a hat that can be QS for 50k, it's just less hassle than people umming and ahhing because they can't take your non liquid items. If you do need to take the L, just quicksell and try again. I'd suggest trade servers like Vatican, ect ect, because even though the majority of people there are mega rich they'll always know someone around your budget you can sell to.

I've been trading for 15 years and I can say You don't, I was selling 15+ unusuals, and ended up selling to bots, even in my suggestions, most of the time it will go to a bot/stn or go in a bulk deal. Very rare to do "unusual swaps". Some good hats with get full pure sales but otherwise thats it A lot of deals are seemingly... fake. I bought a hat under buy orders just for those b/o's to drop heaps.. I mean there is a certain discord u can pay to get listing alerts for deals, but I haven't really bothered with that as most bots will snipe stn deals, classified deals, scm deals, etc. Tradehistory w/ history bastard Practice I guess. Checking sellers, buyers, market, and just knowing in general how popular the hat/class is, and the effect, how many in existence, whats the competition, etc. I generally look with premium if theres any recent sales to value the hat Honestly, when I've had it for a little bit and buyers appear to be dropping like crazy and I can't even get people to offer on it at all, not even a lowball, or when a bunch of people say they wouldn't even pay what buy orders are asking

I learnt something new watching the l4d1 one, that they aren't actually immune and they're just asymptomatic carriers, making sense why they had a "curse" or "stroke of bad luck" with their rescuing pilots on No Mercy / Dead Air. I also did not know they actually got in with CEDA until a riot happened and they broke out and went to be on their own

Hi everyone, For context, I have been trading TF2 items for almost 12 years now. (Damn I feel old...) Automation has taken a huge chunk of my life in the trading realm, some big wins, some big big losses I am genuinely asking how do you manually trade? How do you search for deals? How do you keep track for how much you bought something for? How do you know when something is profitable to buy or not? When do you know you should take the L and sell that unusual for a loss? Last question would be, what do you think about this automated economy? Any tricks or tips? If you don't mind sharing, I'll be very much appreciated

in terms of how to actually close it there should be an X at the top right of the suggestion that you can click to close (its where the vote arrows are) but from looks of it i would keep it up unless a price mode tells you to close it

upvoted good suggestion it should be fine but vege's comment is also valid concern so it might be up for a while

Usually people will give you feedback on it if there is an issue with a suggestion. You can either close it yourself at any point if you feel like it's a good idea to do so and reopen it with a "better" suggested price. I usually only close suggestions if a price moderator tells me the suggestion won't get accepted like it is or when there is good counter evidence against it. Price mods can also close suggestions at any point, so if you leave one they told you to close open for a while, they will most likely close it at some point. If you are concerned about the suggestion you currently have open, I would just wait for price mods to either accept it or give you feedback on it. I personally think the 345 should be fine.

I am wondering, how do I know when to close a suggestion after I have posted it, or does it automatically close after a period of time?

Thank you! I feel like being forced to do artwork is the only actually redeeming aspect of doing tradeups for me lol. I was proud of my doggy drawing!

if you draw saxton hale's sexy muscles in great detail enough times you will eventually get your pension

Definitely some bs

This video inspired me! I will NEVER stop gambling! Amazing drawing skills on the trade up envelope btw, I think drawing cool pictures boosts your chances of good results

I found some in the scrap bots on stntrading.eu as well. More luck there than scrap.tf... I'm not even sure if the names show up on scrap.tf scrap bots? Can anyone confirm? I looked through all the bots yesterday and didn't see any with names.

Not much of a reason to buy a portal misc unless you are doing a double portal though or at least comboing it with something like burning flames. But if you can afford a portal misc you can afford a portal on a normal hat too