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This is not a scam, we will not be banning and we will remove negative trusts. @Merendas (FT) I'm sorry dude, it really sucks so much ass and I feel incredibly bad for you, but at the end of the day it was your error. You had multiple chances to catch it via steam requests for confirmation, and you didn't. I can't in good conscience hold someone else accountable for a mistake that you made. However, @Jason Le while I will not ban you, I do want you to know that I think you're a terrible person. Taking advantage of someone's mistake and going so far as to laugh and taunt them about it may not be against the rules but it's an utterly shitty thing to do, and if you have a decent bone in your body you will return his items.

I feel compelled to add on to this and say that although Merendas handled this situation terribly, him being a dick doesn't actually justify not returning his items. It's incredibly clear, Jason, that you wouldn't have returned the items regardless; "he was being a dick" is just a convenient excuse to justify what you already would've done: abuse the mistakes of others to your own benefit. Regardless of whether or not you are a scammer, it's apparent that you are among the lowest kind of people in this community. Let it not be thought that by not taking action against you we are supporting you or your actions. As far as I am concerned, you are a disgrace to the TF2 community. It doesn't take a big person to not capitalize on someone else's honest mistake. On the contrary; only a small person would do what you have done.

Don't talk about percents, always depends on the unusual, there's many unusuals that are underpriced which you can get an amazing deal paying full price, and there's overpriced shit which you can get ripped off paying 50% of the value or more. I'm tired of not so smart people saying "lol that's not a quicksale a quicksale is +30% off", don't be like that, use your brain, bp.tf is not a bible.

When I read the title, I assumed that yet another person got scammed because they can't differentiate between a festive and a festivized weapon. However, I wasn't expecting to find that the person scammed themselves.

Based on your trusts I'm not sure it's a good idea to help you in case you're the lead cast for Jaws 5

You didn't get scammed. You screwed up. There's a difference. Its not like Jason went out of his way to deceive you to steal your items. He just merely accepted an offer you sent out of your own stupidity. Stop making a thread that you got scammed because it puts heat towards other people and its honestly annoying. If he is nice enough to give you back your unusuals, then you're in luck hes a great guy. But if not there isn't anything you can do about it. In the end life sucks and you should learn from your mistakes and not call people scammers when you are the one that messed up.

TLDR; I think backpack.tf’s trading with scammer bans are outdated and too strict. I have proposed a slightly laxer system in the final paragraphs. Dear all, I’m Julia. Most of you probably already know me as one of many Unusual traders. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that I have been around these parts for some while. While I usually like to joke around and not take anything too seriously I have had some persisting thoughts regarding trading policy here at backpack.tf which I wanted to share, and to garner your opinions on. I appreciate your time in reading this post. The topic I want to discuss is backpack.tf’s rules regarding bans for trading with scammers. The current rules are as follows: “If a trader unknowingly fails to meet these expectations, bans will be issued as follows: (1) First offense - 3 days to 1 week depending on the severity of the action (2) Second offense - 2 weeks to 2 months depending on the severity of the action (3) Third offense - permanent ban (may be appealed after 6 months) If a trader knowingly fails to meet these expectations and is found to intentionally trade with scammers, the ban will instantly be a permanent one.” Source: As a bit of history, some of you will remember years ago, SteamREP would mark/ban traders who would repeatedly (or intentionally) trade with scammers. The rule was later removed in 2016 after much criticism. Source: https://forums.steamrep.com/threads/policy-change-trades-with-scammer-policy-end-of-life.119528/ The criticism leading to removal was: honest traders were being marked; essentially sharing the same punishment as scammers themselves, some of which whom have no remorse for taking what they can from other people. To many of these traders their ban marked a halt to their trading activities. It was a harsh punishment for a few mistakes. Around the time this SteamREP rule was removed, backpack.tf implemented its own set of rules. It was only after then that backpack.tf would begin to ban traders from using its service as punishment for trades with scammers. Although the rules set by backpack.tf are much less strict than that of SteamREP’s old rules, they could still be improved to make the trading environment better for everyone. The way backpack.tf is stacking up bans for this type of offense is becoming reminiscent of old SteamREP policies. As backpack.tf holds an immense role in trading currently, the ability to use it freely is essential to most traders and its bans have an impact on how people trade. The current rules dictate: three strikes, you’re out. Regardless of how long you’ve been trading, regardless of how many trades you’ve made. You only get three strikes. In my time here, I know of many well-known traders awaiting their third strike that will abruptly conclude their trading career. Many of these people possess thousands of dollars worth of items. As a long-time trader I’ve personally never been banned for trading with scammers. However, I have most definitely made mistakes while trading. Those mistakes were accepting offers I otherwise wouldn’t have accepted, miscounting keys, listing the wrong effect hat on the market, listing items for the wrong price, rushing changes into my bot without proper testing, and so on. After over 17,000 trades and nearly 100,000 Steam Community Market transactions, I feel that I can safely say that I’m an experienced trader. Even then, I believe I could make mistakes and no longer have the same freedom to trade. I enjoy trading and it’s not something I’d want to happen. I go to great lengths to avoid trading with scammers. I have authored and utilize a userscript for checking a user’s reputation more easily. My Unusual trading bot also utilizes 7 different resources for checking accounts. If anything seems amiss I must manually check my potential trading partner. However, there are times where I’m either tired or not very cautious and mistakes do happen. There are times where I’ve forgotten to check a user’s reputation before accepting a trade. Though, thankfully it never resulted in me trading with a scammer. I suspect that many others aren’t as fortunate as I am. They would be more susceptible to making mistakes and accruing strikes which ultimately end their trading activities. Ever since the rules for background checks were established they haven’t seen much change. The current rules do not consider length of time between aberrant trades. It could be a month, it could be over a year. Going a year without trading with any scammers is a long time. Should a trader be so severely punished for trading with a scammer for the third time, even if it’s been over a year since their last trade? Please bear in mind, I am not saying that we should make the rules so relaxed that we condone trading with scammers. I do not think scammers should have an easy way of offloading their stolen goods. I myself would not do anything differently if the rules were to be changed. I don’t know the perfect solution to the problem, but I want to propose a change. Like a driver’s license points systems for traffic violations, make it so that a trader collects points for each trade with a scammer. When the trader collects so many points within a certain period of time they are permanently banned. The points would reset after a certain period of time, say a year. This should be fair for everyone in the long-term of things and still prevent traders from trading with scammers. Thanks for reading. This is something that’s been on my mind getting back into trading and I’d like to hear everyone else’s thoughts on the matter, and if anyone else has any other suggestions for rule changes.

He immediately proceeded to unfriend me afterwards, so sad :<

Geel assassinated both bazaar and outpost with his empire consisting of marketplace.tf, backpack.tf and scrap.tf

First of all, you know this is not the way to deal with any issues. If your bot is banned, make an appeal from that account and we will look into it. Making a thread which sounds like a ranting 10 year old is not how you deal with these issues. Second, uncraft genuine fear mongers do not exist as far as I know. The fear monger in trade offers from people I could find are craftable - https://backpack.tf/item/5140151073 https://backpack.tf/item/4374806161 . Your bot does appear to be declining trades for craftable genuine fear mongers even though it had a listing up at that price. That is against the rules and will lead to a ban. We do not play favorites with our bans. If you are in violation of our rules, you will be banned. We sometimes give warnings on first offenses, but to my knowledge this is not a first offense for your bots. Just because you pay for premium does not mean you are above the rules. The rules apply to you as much as they apply to anyone else. Have some respect for the rules and ensure that all your bots are following them. If you don't want to deal with your bots getting banned, make sure that their listings are correct and that they are accepting offers. If you have too many listings to handle, you may want to consider making less listings.

EDIT: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1353725346 <--- Updated version on Steam Before I start there are few things I wanna say and be clear about. 1. I love helping everyone and so this was a guide (a shorter version) I made for my friends from the TF2 community in my region on my discord server, The screenshots shown in this guide is like a few months old from when I made this guide so I did not bother to strike off the names as those trade won't be existing now. 2. Everything that I have said below is a collection of data I gathered online and from my own experience in trading. (not everything are my own words but I strongly agree with everything said below) 3. There are many other guides out there for trading you are free to follow/check that as well. By no means this is a perfect guide or the best one out there. 4. There will be very basic things mentioned here which most of you may already know but that is for the people who are very new to trading. What is TRADING on steam? Trading is a system that lets people exchange items with other people. This system allows players to swap weapons, cosmetics, tools and more with other players within Steam itself On August 9, 2011, the trade beta updates were added to the public Steam client and on September 6, 2011. With Steam trading, people were able to trade their in-game items for other in-game items with other people. Team Fortress 2 Trading Item trading is the backbone of the economy in Team Fortress 2. Weapons, hats, and metal are all traded frequently and have their own individual values. 1. Weapons and hats will be given to the player via the drop system, 2. Items can also be obtained via the crafting system. There are specific recipes for almost every item which can be found in the in-game crafting section Currency Since you can't directly trade money to other players Metal is the most basic currency in Team Fortress 2. Keys which can only be obtained by either buying them from the store or trading metal for it Earbuds are next which can be obtained by trading keys and metal These 3 items are the basic currency used in TF2 for trading There are many keys in TF2 but Mann Co. Supply Crate Key is the currency key keep this in mind. Types of Metal There are mainly 3 types of metal in Team Fortress 2 Scrap Metal, Is obtained by Smelting two class weapons together (Can be done In-game) Reclaimed Metal, Is obtained by Smelting three scrap metals together (Can be done In-game) Refined Metal, Is obtained by Smelting three reclaimed metal (can be done In-game) 1 Refined Metal = 9 Scrap Metal or 1 Refined Metal = 3 Reclaimed Metal 1 Reclaimed Metal = 3 Scrap Metal 1 Reclaimed Metal in mathematical terms - 0.33 1 Scrap Metal in mathematical terms - 0.11 0.99 is counted as 1 in TF2 ITEM QUALITIES Quality is a property of items, which is represented in-game by the color of the item's name and (in most cases) by a title prefixed to the item's name. An item can have only one quality, which is determined when the item is created and remains unchanged There are 12 different qualities of items in TF2, But only 8 of them are more common and traded most. Normal · Unique · Vintage · Genuine · Strange · Collector's · Decorated · Unusual · Haunted · Community · Self-Made · Valve From the list above Unique · Vintage · Genuine · Strange · Collector's · Decorated · Unusual and Haunted are the most commonly traded items Shortlisting this, even more, it will be Unique Strange and Unusual The highest traded items Unique quality is the item quality assigned to items which can be found through random drops during gameplay Vintage is an item quality used most commonly to designate previously Unique items obtained prior to the Mann-Co Update, where it was introduced. Genuine item quality was originally introduced alongside the RIFT promotion as a way to allow items obtained through participation in a cross-game promotion or an in-game event to be distinguished from the same items gained via other methods - such as through the random drops or via crafting. Strange quality is an item quality available for weapons and cosmetics that track the stats (kills and points) of that item. Haunted is an item quality designated for Halloween-themed items. Many, but not all, Halloween items have a Haunted version. Collector's is an item quality that is given to items obtained by completing special Chemistry Sets Decorated is an item quality assigned to weapons with special grade factors, varying levels of exterior wear, and possibly a Strange counter and/or Unusual effect. Unusual quality is an item quality used on cosmetic items, taunts, and weapons. Unusual items have special attached particle effects. How To Start Trading It's actually hard to start with nothing at all, so its best to have a very small investment to start with. I would recommend 2 keys (which is what I started with) This is a section about slow profit that you don’t need much metal to do, making it perfect for new traders getting started and learning the basics of TF2 trading. This section is nothing I would recommend doing a long time just because it’s just so slow profit. It's just to kick off your trading with very low investment 5 Things you need to check/have before you start Get TF2 premium Get the Steam app (for trade confirmation) - much better and safer than email confirmations Activate Steam guard Set your profile to public Have your Trade offer URL As mentioned earlier its best to have some kind of investment when you start trading for the first time, so buy 2 keys and convert 1 key into metal (refined, reclaimed and scrap) and save your other key. How do I do that? Just go here - https://scrap.tf/keys and sell 1 key. There’s like thousands of different ways to trade and make a profit, and I will show you a few ways to help you get started. I’ll be talking about a few basic methods of trading. [ This is what I started doing when I started Trading long ago ] Buy and Sell Popular Items How do I know which are popular items? Taunts, Tools, and craft hats. These Items sell a lot everyday and its good profit Tools include items like Backpack Expanders, Name tags, Tour of Duty Ticket etc (basically consumable items of small value) Taunts are also a good start for new Traders with a limited budget. Buy and sell these items for a small profit. Go for items and aim to buy & sell a lot of items to get your profit going, don’t try and buy ridiculously low or sell to high, then you’ll never get to buy/sell any items. Banking these items can be hard with all the competition from other traders, especially traders using bots. If you want to grab a trading bot of your own there’s actually free option available, trade.tf they have bots available for free. (To know more about these bots DM me) or just buy a bot.tf bot. - Look for people that are selling a bunch of cosmetics/taunts/tools on TF2outpost, make an offer for all their items at a discount, don’t go crazy and offer way below what they're asking for, instead aim for a small profit when buying in bulk, make it worth it for both parties. - Look for people that are selling items at discount on backpcak.tf Here is an example of an Item. You can see those guys are selling it for much less than bots (Yes he is offline but if you can get the item from them you can make a profit of 1-4 scrap or by selling it) either to the bots that are buying it or by listing it for sale NOTE: In backpack.tf Every item You see on the left side with Green arrow is SELL ORDER Every Item You see on the right side with Blue arrow is BUY ORDER In the above-shown example, you can see that bots are buying this item for 2.88 refined and there are people selling it for 2.55 onwards Just mentioning this because I have seen a lot of people getting confused with this. This is another example or way to make easy profit. Some bots will be having outdated prices (The owners may be just too lazy to update it? idk but this happens a lot). As u see in the screenshot every bot is selling this item for 4.33 ref and buying it for 4.11 ref but one bot has a buy order at 5.33 ref. Just buy from the selling bot and sell it to the buying bot for easy profit. (This is kind of cheeky but hey it's not something rule-breaking as they there is a legit buy order which has an old outdated price.) Keep in mind bots might have stock limit set (so reload the page after a trade and check if the bot is still buying that item. Trade.tf has a feature which scans all the big trading sites for good deals, this can be a great place to find a few items you can make a profit on. In order to use the service you need to have their premium membership, it’s free and all you have to do is to add “trade.tf” into your Steam name. If the site says an item is on sale for like 60% off, it’s probably too good to be true, the service isn’t flawlessly and you always need to double check everything before making a deal. It also has a bot that can help you with trading which is also free for premium members. Do check it out, and if you are confused or have any questions please DM me When you have made a decent profit from trading craft hats taunts and tools its time to step things up a bit and find better deals and items that give more profit. These items need more investment or will cost more than these small items so make sure to at least have 5 keys and some refined when you start doing this. Items Include - Unique Killstreak items, Strange Killstreak Items, Vintage items, Genuine items, Strange Cosmetics etc As you trade more and more you will get an idea how this works and how to get more profit from which items from your own experience. Once you have about 10-15 keys then you can start with Unusual Trading (although 8 keys are enough to start unusual trading its best to have some extra keys as backup) Unusual Trading This section is purely based on my personal experience in Unusual Trading. I am not that good of an unusual trader and there are people who are 100x better than me also there are many other guides out there for unusual trading you are free to follow/check that as well. This guide is for people that want to get started with unusual trading or for any trader that want to learn new ways of making a profit with unusual's. When it comes to unusual trading you need to know all the unusual effects in the game and its value, and in this section, I’ll show you how you can do unusual trading with just a basic knowledge of the TF2 economy. I’ll try to cover everything you need to know to get started with unusual trading but that being said this is by no means a perfect unusual trading guide which I have already said above To start with unusual trading you’ll need around 8-15 keys, the more the better of course but that’s the minimum (The more the better) The second thing you need to know is that you have to be familiar with all the unusual effects in the game. There are currently 105 unusual effects in the game and you can see all these effects here in the link below. https://backpack.tf/effects Here you’ll find all the effects listed in order of the effect’s average price for hats with the effect in question. Effects with a high average are seen as good looking (in-game) and exclusive, generally speaking. This doesn’t mean an effect is more popular/easier to sell because it has a higher price, a higher price unusual effect can be harder to sell because people don’t have/don’t want to spend that kind of money on a hat. Meaning the higher the value of a hat the lesser chance you have to get pure (Its not impossible to get pure for very high-value items but the chances are less as only collectors or people who buy the hat to use would pay the full price in pure) A cheaper unusual effect can be more in demand just because it’s more affordable. When it comes to the question, what effects should you buy? I don’t have a good answer for you, any effect could be a good investment for the right price. But I will recommend do not buy effects like Bubbling, Dead Presidents, Massed Flies, Nuts n Bolts, Overclocked, Memory Leak, Confetti, Codex (I would also include power surge and Electrostatic here but that depends on the hats) and I would also recommend against Unusual Taunts as all of the taunts started dropping in price like rocks Why? Because These effects that have a tiny visual impact in the game, Meaning from a distance you can barely see those effects and they can almost look like regular hats in-game - From my personal experience, these effects are disliked the most and hardest to sell. But if you do happen to find good deals on this effect feel free to go for it. How to know the Value of an Unusual For checking out an unusual’s price your best bet is to head over to Backpack.tf and check what the suggested value is, either head over to the inventory of the user having the hat/taunt on Backpack.tf and find your unusual there, "click on it" then choose stats and you’ll come to unusual's stats page where you can see the price and other stats about your unusual. You can also use the search on Backpack.tf to find the value of a hat. Sometimes a 15 key unusual might have a seller 12 keys so its best not to pay more than 12 for the hat because you cannot sell it for more than 12 as there is already a seller. (just an example) Sometimes an unusual priced at 15 keys might have an Open price suggestion at 12 keys. Do not blindly trust it, open it and check the given proof and see if its valid (IF the given proof on the suggestion is valid then there is a high chance for it to get accepted and drop in price) -- If the price suggestion is relatively new you can check it out and see what past sales have gone for. Both suggestions that are approved and not approved can be worth checking out to know about past sales on that hat. You’ll find the price suggestions at the bottom of an unusual’s stats page. -- Check the Marketplace.tf price and find out if it’s been sold for cash recently. -- What’s the price on the Steam market -- Compare the price with other unusual's that have the same effect or the same hat but with other effects. Preferably one with a more up to date price suggestion. -- Search for the hat on TF2Outpost and see if there are any sellers there. Duplicated Unusual What are Duplicated or Duped Unusuals? Long before valve Implemented Steam Guard Auth, a lot of Trade Scams used to happen. Which was the main reason why valve introduced Steam guard. So basically when you click on accept trade in the trade window on steam The trade used to happen there was no secure confirmations. When solid proof for the scam was submitted valve used to give back the item that got scammed to the victim with "The Same Item ID". These items are the duplicate/duped items. They look the same in-game they do not have any special or different attributes from the Stolen/Scammed item. The only problem with these duplicated items is that they will have less resale value. How to know if an Unusual is Duplicate/Duped? Go to the inventory of the seller on backpack.tf and locate the unusual, click it and then choose History. Here on this page, you’ll see most of the past owners of this unusual and if the hat is duplicated you’ll see a small text in blue that says Duplicated in the right top corner. Checking the history before buying any unusual is also a good thing, this lets you see if there are any banned users mostly scammers (They will have their name in red and crossed over) in the recent history. -- If an Item has many scammer names on the item History then its most likely the value of the item will be low, Meaning most people wouldn't wanna have a hat that was owned by a lot of scammers in the past. Example of a Duplicated Unusual Example of a Clean Unusual You can see in the top right of the item history it will be written Duplicated. Always make sure to check this before buying an unusual Places to find good unusual Deals Backpack.tf and TF2Outpost, they’re by far the most active places for TF2 unusual trading. And if you feel like you need additional options you can check out the rest of the sites on the list later. Backpack.tf is great for finding unusual's or selling your own hats. Each unusual has its own page where you can find buyers and sellers for it, and also it’s price suggestion and any past price suggestion, and other basic info about the hat. If you have Backpack.tf premium you can search for deals on cheap unusual's and sort the results after the % discount the deal has It’s nothing I would recommend new traders though, considering it cost keys each month for premium. Scrap.tf's Unusual bot is a trading bot that buys and sells unusual's, if you’re going to sell your hat to the bot you should expect to lose profit doing so, the bot’s rates are not in favour of sellers, instead it can be a good place to get rid of your unusual's if you see no other option and you can’t get a hat sold. The potential for a good deal is much better when it comes to buying hats from the bot, it requires a lot of price checking and luck though. Scrap.tf Auctions is another section on Scrap.tf, where people put their items up for auction and people, can bid with their items to win the auction, it’s pretty straightforward and there’s plenty of unusual's being posted here. If you have the patience and dedication browsing through all the over-priced auction it can be worth it, but the good deals are quite rare in my experience. Unusual Trading servers Open the game Find the server browser and you can find the following. Skial trading servers https://www.skial.com/servers/ Note: Skial has a lot of servers find the trading ones and join Vatican City Unusual trade server http://www.the-vaticancity.com/ Neon Heights trade servers http://www.neonheightsservers.com/ Fire Powered Unusual trade servers https://firepoweredgaming.com/forums/page/servers These 4 are the best unusual trade servers in the game with Vatican City being the best of them all (My personal favorite) Here, on these servers, you can find a lot of people looking to buy and sell unusual's Quick Sells and how to find them What are quick sells? Quick selling is basically selling an item at 60-70% of the item's actual value or lower. Some people will quick sell their items/unusual for Pure, These are the kind of deals you should mostly be looking for to make profit Go to Backpack.tf and their classifieds section where all the items that are being sold on the site is listed. You’ll find that section of the site by hovering over the Trading tab in the top menu then clicking the Classifieds listings. Then you want to click on deals (only if you have premium if not ignore the deals) and sort the search result so that only Unusuals show up in your search, click on the “…” near the magnifying glass in the search, then choose “Unusual” under the Quality tab, the search will be sorted by cheapest first by default, leave it like that. (or just use this link to get a Classifieds search for unusual's) What we’re going to get is a search filled with listings on Unusuals being sold on the site, you’ll see plenty of hats being sold at a few keys discount, just be sure that you check the price of the unusual before buying it, as we talked about previously in the guide, not all Backpack.tf price suggestions are accurate so you always need to check to see if it’s an accurate price. Keep browsing the listings until you find a good deal in your price range worth investing in. A lot of sellers that are quick selling (selling their unusual at a discount) are looking to get TF2 keys as payment (often mentioned as “pure”) Another way to get quick sells is to make buy orders for unusual's on backpack.tf at cheap quick sell prices and you will get offers from people who are looking to quicksell, The same can be one on TF2 outpost also making an advertisement on Outpost about Buying Quicksell. Again the same can be done on Trade servers. Join an Unusual trade server and start advertising you are buying quick sells for pure on chat or voice. (But please do not spam) These are not the only ways to find quick sells there are many other ways but these are the specific ones I used and as I said at the start this guide is based on my personal experience from trading and I was successful. Selling the unusual's you buy This list can be good to go over if you find yourself stuck with an item that you just can’t sell, I’m usually pretty patient but after having my sell listings up for a long time and not getting it sold it’s can be a good time to try some different to get the item sold. Selling for pure can be difficult to do with some items, if the hat you’re trying to sell isn’t in demand most traders would want a discount on the hat when paying in pure. Simply lowering your price could help getting your hat sold for keys. Selling your unusual's for other unusual's - Head over to Backpack.tf and TF2Outpost and start looking for unusual's that are for sale that you would want to trade your unusual for, be prepared to overpay with your offer though, or you can try and add some keys to make your deal more appealing. (also known as a mixed offer). - If you get unusual offers on your hat make sure to check if that offered hat is clean 1st and then its value if you feel its profit (after checking hat effect price everything) go for it. Else add the trader and negotiate a deal with him. - You can also try and trade your unusual for CSGO items, this requires some basic knowledge of both the TF2 & CSGO market though and I would say based on my experience you’ll have an easier time trading your CSGO items for TF2 items than the other way around. The CSGO economy is much bigger and a lot of the CSGO skins are quite stable, making the, CSGO economy much more appealing for some traders. Some Tips from me. I’ll explain how I make profit trading with unusual's, I’ll try and be as transparent as possible so that you can easily get a hang of it. This is by no means the only way to trade with unusual's, it’s just how I like to do it. Trade with low tier unusual's to start with, there are cheap unusual's in the game that are not the most desirable hats in the game but there’s always a pretty good demand for these unusual's. Instead of buying & selling one expensive unusual I rather trade with 10 cheap unusual's, the profit per trade will most likely be much less but the risk that my hats will lose value or that I’m going to make a bad trade is not that likely. Another benefit of dealing with cheap unusual's is that I don’t need to have a knowledge about all the different effects and prices in the TF2 economy, I know how much keys I paid an unusual for and how much I want to sell it for, it’s a very straight-forward way of trading. Do not deal with Unpriced hats if you are not sure. Just ignore it and move on. Unless you have fairly good knowledge about Unusual trading and all the effects its best you stay away from unpriced hats I always buy hats under the backpack.tf value and I sell them for a relatively low profit, again lower than backpack.tf price. That’s the basic idea of it all, Buy quick sells and quick sell it, For example, a 15 key unusual I might try to get it for 10 or 11 and then sell it for 12 or 13 I use Backpack.tf and TF2Outpost to find people to trade with, I start off by making classifieds listings asking to buy unusual's on these two sites, I usually wait for sellers to come to me with their deals, but you’ll get a better result if you’re actively looking for sellers/good deals and send them your offers From time to time I get a hat that I can’t sell, I have no problem sitting on a hat for a long time but after a couple of weeks I usually would want to sell it and get rid of it, I have a few options then, I either just lower the asking price a bit and try to undercut the other sellers for my hat. I can also head over to Marketplace.tf and sell it for cash, I usually list it with a slight discount just to get it sold faster. My last option is that I sell it on the Steam market, these prices are surprisingly high on the market, the downsides is that 15% sales fee that eats up a lot of profit, these two option usually requires plenty of patience before I get them sold. Best Trading Website Backpack.tf I don't think I need to explain anything about this site now do I? https://backpack.tf/ TF2 Outpost Just like backacpk.tf This website is one of the bigger and more active places for TF2 trading, here you can make listings for buying or selling TF2 items or browse other people’s listings to find yourself a deal. The site doesn’t just support TF2 items, you can make listings for all Steam items. http://www.tf2outpost.com/ Trade.tf This site has Good deals page where the site scans the major trading sites for good deals. But there’s also a part of the site that’s called the Trading market, here people can use the sites inbuilt trading bot feature to make trades for them. The bot is free to use for anyone, you just tell the bot what items you want to sell and for how much, then the bot will do the trading for you. http://www.trade.tf/ Bazaar.tf This is a similar trading site like TF2outpost where you can list your items for sale and find others listings. The site isn’t as popular or active but the site has a bunch of nice features making it worth checking out nonetheless, for example you can get your own trading bot on the site for some sweet automated trading. And it’s very easy to navigate through listings and deals. http://bazaar.tf/ Scrap.tf To put it simple scrap.tf is an automated banking site that changes the way you trade This is an automated trading website that helps everyone in Team Fortress 2 get items they want fast and easy. https://scrap.tf/ STN STNtrading is a similar site to Scrap.tf where you can trade with the sites bots to fast and easy sell or buy items. It’s not as big as it’s competitor but the prices that they pay for your items is usually better than on Scrap.tf. Keep in mind that if you would instead sell/buy your items with another trader instead of these two banking sites you’d most likely get a better deal, but using these sites is fast and convenient. https://stntrading.eu/ Spirit.tf This is a TF2 Trading website which is also automated like scrap.tf but works in a different way. https://spirit.tf/ Mannco Trade Developed by one of TF2's Richest Trader SexySparta mannco.trade is a user friendly website that has the same design as that of the popular cs go trading website cs.money https://mannco.trade/ Sfuminator.tf This is is one of the best sites to buy and sell craft hats (my personal favorite for craft hats) http://sfuminator.tf/ Ocu.tf This is a very old website basically you sell your items for their items simple and easy (UI is a bit weird and slow) https://ocu.tf/ TF2 Warehouse Another Trading website for tf2 (not much popular now) feel free to check it out https://www.tf2wh.com/ TF2mart One of my personal favorite tf2 trading website after backpcak.tf. This website was developed by a Russian guy. The currency / trading in the website is a bit tricky to understand. If you do check it out and did not understand Do text me and I will help you http://tf2mart.net/ Dispenser.tf This is a great website to buy / sell steam games for TF2 keys https://dispenser.tf/ Vault.tf The best place to buy and sell Weapon KITS and Fabricators. http://vault.tf/ r/tf2trade This is the subreddit that’s all about trading TF2 items, here you can list your items or reply and make offers on other peoples trades. Mostly unusual trades are going on in this subreddit but you can make listings for any kind of TF2 trade, just make sure you read the rules before posting, so you format your post correctly and stuff like that, you know how picky Reddit can be about those things. https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/ Safe and Trusted TF 2 Cashing out websites Marketplace.tf Always the best (run by the same owners as that of bacpack.tf and scrap.tf) https://marketplace.tf/ OP SKINS Most Scammers use OP skins bot to do the scams but This is actually a good site to cashout https://opskins.com/ Bitskins https://bitskins.com/ Steamwhiz Not much popular for TF2 items mostly used for cs go but supports TF2 as well https://steamwhiz.com/ Skins.Cash https://skins.cash/ Discord and other useful Links. backpack.tf https://discord.gg/j7cMkGF scrap.tf https://discord.gg/PEXZzZ4 STN https://discord.gg//qXTbt53 marketplace.tf https://discord.gg/kr8MU2C TF2 Outpost https://discord.gg/fhrtkvn Calculator.tf A website used to convert the Key value to ref and vise versa - If you are confused with a decimal key value (1.56 keys for example) just use this website 😉 https://calculator.tf/ Bot.tf Looking for a trading bot? Bot.tf provides professionally made TF2 trading bots for an affordable price for everyone. Ordering a bot is done in a few clicks and you can manage your bot very easily through our robust control panel. This means that you can start your own trading bot without any knowledge of programming! https://bot.tf/ discord - https://discord.gg/nZUUk8U Types of Scams and Scammers In Simple Terms Scamming means Tricking or Fooling someone into stealing their valued items and running with it. There are many different types of scams in TF2. Some you heard of, some you may have fell for, and some you never thought existed. Don't worry! By the end of this section, you will know most (if not all) of the scams in TF2 and how to avoid them 1. Trusted Friend / Middleman Scam A classic scam, that almost everyone knows nowadays. The scammer and his victim both agree on a trade, usually including steam wallet codes or something similar. To make sure everyone gets what he was promised, the scammer suggests taking a middleman or asks his victim to choose a trusted friend as a middleman. One other reason for using a middleman will be - The scammer will say the item is duped and glitched and wants to check if the item after being traded will be seen in the second inventory. The following scenarios could occur The scammer chooses a friend as a middleman. He has a legit looking profile but is teaming up with the scammer The scammer suggests a popular, well known and legit middleman. His friend or 2nd account will try impersonating this middleman [They can also say we can use a Steam or Valve admin as a middleman] After the victim chooses a middleman, the friend or 2nd account of the scammer will impersonate the profile of the chosen middleman. Note: There is no such thing as a steam or valve admin, "They are called valve employees and they will never take part in a trade or add you ever". So if someone says this BS know that its a scammer. 2. Paypal / Steam wallet code Scam A very common method amongst scammers. The scammer will try to convince his victim that he will overpay for his item, in steam wallet codes or via PayPal. The following scenarios could occur: The victim doesn´t receive a working steam wallet code The victim goes first and never receives the money via PayPal The scammer goes first via PayPal but can charge the money back after he received the item The Scammer will impersonate a high tier and trusted trader and try to get your Item saying they will pay later. - So make sure to check who you are trading with all the time. Needlessly to say its a very unsafe method to cash out, never trade for codes of any kind, or PayPal money. Only safe way to cash out that I feel is to use marketplace.tf There is a guide for PayPal scam on the forums go through that before doing any PayPal trades if you are unsure what to do. 3. Impersonators A very common scam amongst the CSGO and TF2 community. The scammer, pretending to be a big trader, will add you and tell you that he is interested in buying your items and will give you links to the real person's profile. Keep in mind No big traders will ever add you for any of your items (Cases are very rare). Simple way to know if the guy who added you is legit or not is by checking their steam inventory, If its set to private or if you see "My inventory Link" written on their profile then be 100% sure its a scammer, anything they say to justify the reason for having inventory private or another inventory link on their profile is bullshit. 4. Youtuber Scam The scammer pretends to be a famous YouTuber who apparently needs your item for a video. Needlessly to say, he won't return it. No famous YouTuber will ever ask you for any of your skins. Keep that in mind. This is just another form of Impersonating scam Fairly simple and well-known. No matter who asks you, if it´s (seemingly) a Youtuber/streamer or even if it is a close friend - DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR ITEMS. This person could be an impersonator and even if you made sure that it is the actual person, this very person could always be greedy, or maybe just need the money. Anyway, it´s never a good idea to give away your skins for free, and if you actually want to borrow an item to a friend, make sure its someone to trust and at your own risk. I´ve heard of multiple people who got scammed by their "friends" over some point. 5. OP SKINS bot scam This needs no special introduction or anything, Its the most common type of scam out there. The scammer adds the user and says he is willing to buy their item but before they buy they want to make sure if the item is marketable on OPSKINS and asks the victim to list their item in OPSKINS and convince them to do it. While the victim is doing this the scammer sends a trade offer from their alt account named "OPSKINS Bot 5" or something similar tricking the user into believing that the trade offer actually came from the OP SKINS website. 6. Fake Gamble Sites This scam is a fairly new one. The scammer randomly adds his victim (usually through steam groups) and tells him he is the owner, moderator or co-owner of a new gambling site. Since he is apparently not allowed to play on there himself, he´ll promise his victim to let him win on the site in exchange for a profit participation. Since this site can mostly be manipulated by the scammer himself he´ll choose a winner for the next draw/round and tell his victim the name to proof that he can actually make anyone win. Once the victim deposits his skins on the site, they are either gone, or cant be withdrawn. 7. Phishing links A very common method to spread a virus is via misleading links. In most cases, they look like links from popular websites (e.g. imgur, steam, youtube etc.) but differ in only 1 letter, Like the o can be a 0 in the link etc.Do not click any links from someone who you do not know in person, it can steal your login data and send it to them. 8. Quick Switching One of the oldest scamming methods is called "Quickswitching". Back in the days where the mobile authenticator wasn´t a thing and many people disabled the email confirmation step, the scammer invited his victim to a trade and put in the desired item. A few seconds before the victim agrees to the trade, he exchanges the desired item for a similar looking, but different quality one. If done quickly, the victim only had a very slight time window to react. Luckily this trade doesn't work anymore since everyone has Steam guard confirmation step enabled. Yet there are some people who do not notice it and still get scammed. 9. Teamspeak Scam An extended phishing link method. The scammer adds his victim, telling he and his team will take part of a tournament but they need one more player/backoff. As soon as the victim agrees to help out, the scammer sends him the Teamspeak IP, to start "training" a little. As soon as the victim tries to enter the Teamspeak server, a SERVER notification pops up, asking to upgrade to the latest ts3 version. These pop-ups are server notifications with phishing links, do not click on them. If a new Teamspeak version has been released, your Teamspeak client will tell you as soon as it starts, not as soon as you join a server. 10. Email confirmation Link A scam that used to be around a long time ago, when the trading scene just started to grow. The scammer asks his victim to copy paste him the E-mail confirmation/decline link. Although this scam method is - luckily - not around anymore, keep in mind not to give any unnecessary information to strangers. This information will either stay useless or may even harm you or others. 11. Misleading trade offer Scam You get a Trade offer, In the trade offer, the note probably says something like this: "Upon the acceptance of this trade, you will receive $100 via PayPal." There are no items being offered to you. When you accept, there is no cash. and you lose the item The scammer may change his name to "Screw TF2, Quitting TF2" The note would say something like "I'm leaving TF2, here's some free stuff!". Instead of him offering anything, it would show you offering him free stuff! When you accept it, you end up losing items There are more ways for this to happen but hard to explain everything here (you get the idea) NEVER ACCEPT A TRADE OFFER THAT IS EMPTY ON ONE SIDE. If u come across a trade offer like that double and triple check before accepting. How not to get scammed The scammer's goal is simple. To steal your item and to do so he will say a lot of bullshit and blindside you with profit meaning offering more than what an item is valued. Never fall for such cheap tricks The first thing you have to realize while starting to trade is, there will always be people who will harm others in order to make some profit. People like those exist in masses because the internet gives them enough emotional distance to their victim. If you feel uncomfortable while doing a trade, don't do it, there´s no need to. It´s your item, so is it your decision. If someone seems fishy in any way, do not trust him. Having a higher steam level doesn't mean the user can be trusted, Even you can increase your steam level by spending money +rep on the user's profile is easy to fake and should not be trusted. Since all comments can be deleted by the scammer, putting -rep on a profile is pointless. Make sure their PayPal is verified before doing a PayPal trade. Check their recent game playtime. Many scammers use separate alt's for gaming and scamming. NEVER click links to steam profiles given to you by traders. These are often phishing sites and logging into them will result in your steam account being hijacked. Check their Steamrep profile to see if they are a scammer. Also check, to see the creation date of their profile. If their profile was made within the last month or so, be wary https://steamrep.com/ or https://rep.tf/ Go to one of these websites and paste the user's profile URL on the website search and check (This is the easiest way to check if the user is a scammer or not) Another easier way is to use the Steam Rep Checker Chrome extension (My personal Suggestion) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/steamrep-checker/egnijmkeaaclmednfcjhmhangbfipidf <--- Install this in your google chrome and open their profile on chrome It should look something like this https://gyazo.com/f103119e20d60393e88807cad57cfb08 If the user is a scammer. It auto scans steam rep and pops up a warning. Everything else is said above, but just saying The main things again Never get blinded by profit and always check steam rep of a user you are trading with (if the value of the item is high) Never trade without getting anything in return Well that sums up this guide In short - This is what I did and what I followed and I am living proof for Scrap to Unusual can be done. Set a Goal for trading Do not simply trade without any goals, I had a dream which was to own The BEST Unusual (effect) in the game NEBULA I never traded much in unusual's and I quit unusual trading after I got the unusual's and taunts I Wanted As a legend once said "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" On 23rd March-2017 Just after 1 year of trading, I was able to reach my dream of getting my 1st own Nebula Unusual. https://backpack.tf/item/4747269531 Nebula Phononaut But I did not stop there I wanted to own an even better hat ( The Universal Translator ) 4 months after getting the phononaut I was able to get my hands on Strange Nebula Universal Translator https://backpack.tf/item/4800061296 (RIP now) 10$ is all I spent in TF2 and I have cashed out over 1000's of $ in the past. 5$ to buy my 1st 2 keys and My backpack on March 12 - 2016 https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523?time=1457769600 Started off with 2 keys bought from the steam market 5$ to buy my 1st 4 mvm tickets! My Backpack on 27-4-2016 https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523?time=1461715200 Got an 8 Key Fab from mvm sold for 6 keys.These were my initial Investment in Trading My Backpack on 26-1-2018 https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523?time=1516924800 and you all know what happened on 27th Jan 2018 I started over again on 12-2-2018 with 100 keys from friends https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523?time=1518393600 My backpack today http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523 Not trading much these days and I plan on starting again soon. "Hope my way of trading was inspiring, For me to achieve this much in from just 2 keys is actually a big deal" Also, I hope you found some new websites here from the ones listed above. If you wanna get in touch with me Feel free to add me on steam (comment before adding) http://steamcommunity.com/id/Zmok3/ or PM me on discord SmokeY#2955 There might be a lot of things that are not mentioned and there might be some sites or things I must have forgotten. Also, I am sure there will be a lot of typos if you spot anything do let me know Thank you for reading and finally, any criticism appreciated! - SmokeY

Hence there is something such as ugly as we perceive things the way we like it. You should not get disheartened by the basics of an economy and some people who are just vile by design. Ignore them and keep doing you my man!

Currently sharks receive a negative trust in an attempt to warn people that they are known to offer uneven trades, but I believe this to be insufficient. New users don't know what trust is, so they are very unlikely to check it, and a shark's trust can easily go unnoticed, as it is very small on the page. This is even more problematic when the trust rating is orange rather than bright red, which is the case when the user's trust is neutral or positive overall. I suggest that a larger warning tag is added to the profiles of sharks, similar to the one used to warn people of impersonators. New users would be much more likely to read this.

We have had an absolutely amazing week with a rough estimate of around 400 unusuals and taunts updated during the course of the event! I know you've all been eagerly awaiting the results, so on to the prizes... Mods' Choice: Teamwork $150 bonus marketplace credit shared between your team, and a fancy winners badge on your backpack.tf profile We debated between a few different teams who really impressed us during the event. For the most part, you all showed a fantastic level of engagement and teamwork, and you should all be proud of yourselves. However, when it came down to it, the team we feel worked the best together overall was Team 3. Pretty much every member of this team was online, enthusiastic, and working extremely hard. The more experienced team members were hugely involved and spent time with their less experienced peers, and the newcomers to suggesting continually asked questions, listened to answers, and were eager to learn. The fact that this team also scored the most points demonstrates the power in working together and utilising every person on your team. Fantastic job, guys. Mods' Choice: Quality $150 bonus marketplace credit shared between your team, and a fancy winners badge on your backpack.tf profile We were again torn between several different teams for this award. Several teams managed to maintain high quality output throughout, with minimal numbers of closed suggestions compared to other teams. The team we eventually decided on was Team 2. This team managed an impressive 63 points with ZERO closed suggestions through the event, which is an incredible feat which no other team has matched! Event MVP $50 bonus marketplace credit and MVP badge on your backpack.tf profile There were multiple experienced suggesters who displayed exemplary teaching, endless patience, solid work ethic, and a huge time input. You should all be proud of yourselves for helping new users understand how suggesting works and for making this event enjoyable for them. The person we decided did this the best was Shuffle spy. Shuffle demonstrated incredible leadership, patience, quality control, teaching, and plain old hard work. He made suggestions himself and skillfully guided his teammates, allowing them to blossom. Best Newcomer $50 bonus marketplace credit and a special badge on your backpack.tf profile Although this was not originally a planned category, we decided that it was absolutely necessary. MVP is always going to be won by someone with experience, but that doesn't mean that newcomers to suggesting aren't valuable. Numerous site newbies put in an incredible amount of work, showing willingness and eagerness to learn, and picking up the elements of suggesting extremely quickly. The event wouldn't work without you guys either, and we want to reward your effort in this event and future ones. Our choice for best newcomer this time was Pasdenon. He threw himself into the event, put in an incredible amount of time and hard work, and most of all had fun! Participation Every person participating in the event will receive 1 month of free premium, a share of the $1 per point prize pool for their team's points total, and a participation badge on their backpack.tf profile. All prize info has been sent to geel and jesse to apply. Team points totals: Team 1 total 15 Team 2 total 64 Team 3 total 121 Team 4 total 107 Team 5 total 43 Team 6 total 42 Team 7 total 46 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who participated. We ran the event over a fairly busy period, but despite that the amount of work put in by participants, event helpers, and price moderators, has been astounding. I particularly want to thank our event helpers, who put in a huge amount of their own time for no reward and both contributed to teams' success and lightened the load on the mods. As a small thanks, you will all receive 1 month of free premium on the site. Last but not least I want to thank our wonderful owners, geel and jesse, who have generously agreed to provide all the prize funds. In summary: you're all fantastic! Thank you for another great event. We'll run the next one when everyone has some more free time. - Teeny and Woifi P.S. If you haven't already, please head here to give us some feedback on the event! Thanks!

We have had issues for a long time in the way the site handles USD pricing for items. At present, we price refined based on cash sales, and then every item on the site gets a price derived from that. It has been pointed out repeatedly that this is not the best system, for two main reasons; 1) The vast majority of cash transactions happen in keys which trade at 1.85-1.95 USD, putting refined solidly around 0.06 USD. The difference isn't a small one. Refined moves very slowly. It's easily possible to move thousands of keys at 1.90 per key before moving even a few hundred refined at 0.08 per ref. When considering the intrinsic dollar value of all items, you have to keep these values in consideration - that the intrinsic refined value of all items is around 0.06 USD per ref. 2) Because refined moves so slowly, it's just not worth it from a time and energy perspective for highly reputable people to trade in refined. Refined moves most commonly on highly reputable sites such as marketplace.tf. People are willing to pay more for the convenience and added security. This additional value added is not part of the intrinsic value of the item itself and it certainly is not a value that gets transferred to all other items in the tf2 community, even keys. So, what can we do to fix this problem? The best idea would be to instead price keys based on cash sales and then derive all item prices from that. However, this is currently not possible the way the site is hard-coded, and would require an enormous re-write on the part of the devs. While it’s always a consideration for the future, the mod team have decided that we need a better solution for now. The idea we have come up with is something of a workaround. We will continue to price refined in USD but instead of using cash sales for refined itself, we will instead use cash sales for keys as the proof when pricing refined. We willthen use the ratio of refined to keys at the time of the suggestion to get a more accurate suggested USD value for refined. Cash sales for keys occur significantly more frequently, and occur in bulk outside of sites such as marketplace which may add a premium for the safety and security. This will be a much, much more accurate method for estimating the intrinsic value of items in the game in USD. In practice, the way a suggestion for refined would work would be as follows... Suggestion proof: · Trade links and histories showing X sales of keys for X USD. For the purpose of the example, let’s say 1.85, 1.9, 1.95, and 2 · Link or reference to the current key price in refined, let’s say 30 refined for example · You would then work out the USD price of refined based on the proof shown, for example: 1.85/30 = 0.062 1.9/30 = 0.063 1.95/30 = 0.065 2/30 = 0.067 · From this you might make a suggestion at 0.06 USD or even 0.06-0.07 USD We are happy to answer any questions that you have and explain our rationale further below. Hopefully the community will see that this is a positive change that makes for much more accurate USD values on all items on the site.

https://scrap.tf/unusuals/89

I spent more time making this then I care to admit.

Don't listen to the haters on here. Just because they have decades of combined trading experience doesn't mean they're smarter than you. Buy up all the buds you can, and prove them all wrong. Follow your dreams!

Hi all! Since the latest items scam, there's a lot of panic and people are afraid to trade. So I quickly wrote this browser script which will detect fake items, warn you and mark them. Installation instructions and source code can be found here: https://github.com/dyhli/plugin-steam-item-check Enjoy and stay safe out there.

That's a strait shark lol

x3 massed flies

puddingkip is a weeb

No this is not going to eliminate all sharking altogether as that is impossible, but it's way better than nothing at all. (Just an idea, not perfected at all) The Problem: There's been a huge increase in the number of people using premium search as a tool to find inexperienced unboxers just to get good deals as these unboxers have no idea the worth of their item. I've seen cases where within half an hour of a valuable unbox there are already 4 "sharkers" adding them on steam to try to squeeze as much profit as they can out of them. Action has been taken in the form of a -trust on users who are known to use this method, however lots of these inexperienced unboxers haven't even logged into backpack.tf before, so this I feel isn't enough. Common method I'm seeing is highballing an Unpriced item at a super high price and I've noticed lots of newer traders think that just because a high tier trader has listed for that price that it must be worth that much. Basically manipulation, but the "sharker" hasn't said anything. My Solution: My suggestion would be to have protected users that their profiles can not be tracked through premium search. Protected users could include: - Never logged into backpack.tf or other major trading websites - This I feel is the best idea as people who have not logged into a trading website before likely aren't trading altogether/don't know how to trade at all. This would not effect normal traders too much as if they aren't trading, then you won't be able to get the hat anyway. Also the easiest one to implement. - Low time spent on steam - Low backpack value/huge increase in backpack value after an unbox - High Value item being searched combined with any of the above reasons This protection could be turned off as soon as the user passes a certain mark that considers them to be experienced enough (not entirely sure how this would work as of now). Other Solutions: - Banning people from using prem search altogether who are deemed to be using it wrongfully - A [Request Price Check] Feature on the site that creates a page where users appointed by backpack.tf mods can comment and give accurate price checks. Could even work like a price suggestion by taking in all of the people's opinions on price and then giving a final range on price. Again, just some ideas I thought I'd share, so definitely not perfected. Other thoughts and ideas would help too.