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Hullo, good day to you all. I still go by aj. I've been "hyping" this up for a while now and just been snowed in with a bunch of work and other stuff including getting stuff ready for uni but I think I may as well strike while the iron is hot and get this pumped out. Disclaimer: The following is merely a summation of how I make an unusual price suggestion, this isn't the only way and it's probably not the best way. It's what works best for me and it works as efficiently as I want it to be. There's plenty of other inspiration to draw from if you wish to learn and improve your own style of making suggestions further. For starters: I've noticed that on forums, there really isn't an up-to-date guide that shows how to actually make an unusual price suggestion. Here are a few example that are related to suggestions, I do encourage you to read through them but also, block of text = I can't read. Do not fret, I also plan on livestreaming myself making an unusual price suggestion and going through all the relevant steps in the Unusual Suggestions Reward Program discord (Link is here: https://discord.gg/EphDURbAXT - thank you Cave) [The date for this will be decided at a later time via the poll] https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/792-how-to-make-a-good-suggestion/ - Here's one from 2013 https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/6033-rules-for-unusual-price-suggestions/ - Here are the rules for making Unusual Price Suggestions, definitely worth the long read https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/59832-guide-how-to-use-the-compare-function/ - Alberny's compare function guide, I will be elaborating quite heavily on this since technology has advanced and scripts are now publicly available for everyone https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/67144-suggestion-guide-what-is-a-mini/ - Lemon's mini guide https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/72261-suggestion-guide-what-is-a-buyout-cap/ - Lemon's buyout cap Onto the actual content of the post: Actually, I lied, we aren't pricing anything yet. Lets get you kitted out with all the NECESSARY scripts to make a price suggestion. First, you need to install Tampermonkey - https://www.tampermonkey.net/ This is what you need to manage and install pretty much all the scripts you need when price suggesting. These are pinned inside the backpack.tf discord - https://discord.gg/f5VS7cr - under the #suggestion-discussion channel but I'll reiterate them here Scripts: This is arguably the most important script you will ever install regarding Unusual Price Suggestions https://github.com/juliarose/backpack.tf-premium-sales-finder Julia's fabulous script allows you to get easy access to compare links instead of opening up the seller's profile, clicking compare, going back to the history to check when the seller sold the item, then fiddle with the compare link until you narrow the sale down. With this script, all you do is open an item history, scroll click the seller and buyer compare links and bap, unusual movement. Sometimes you will have to toggle the dates by a day before or a day after but it's often very accurate. This saves so much time and I cannot express how important this script is in terms of efficiency. https://github.com/mninc/gladiator.tf-stats-bptf Gladiator.tf stats and snapshots. These indicate the purchases and sales of a certain item (Unusual in this instance) within the last 30 days. This is useful when determining whether an item was dumped to a bot and also very useful to find buyouts of items, to determine if a sale will cap or not. However, you can't 100% trust the stats, which I will get into at a later point. https://github.com/mninc/keyprice-links This is necessary to make Marketplace.tf and Mannco.store sales easier to decipher. It averages the keyprice in a week period surrounding the sale and automatically divides the sale by the key price at the time to get the sale in terms of keys. https://github.com/NetroScript/backpack.tf-miscellaneous-extensions This script is actually rather useful for general trading purposes but it also gives the added benefit of "Skin Search". Backpack.tf is pretty irritating when it comes to dealing with skins in any aspect, don't get me started on festivized unusual/decorated weapons and their stats pages. But this very easily shows unusual weapons with the click of a button. https://gist.github.com/juliarose/fc00ff2507096c2a5f8a899f4e2564b0 This script is used to open the histories of keys in a compare link. Honestly, I use this sparingly since my laptop might die if it tried opening 200 tabs at once, my limit is somewhere just above 100. https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/47731-script-ultimate-inventory-history-and-scm-history-viewer-the-history-bastard/ This script is quite useful for general trading purposes, it does mess up SCM so disable it whenever you are viewing the Steam Community Market and you should be good to go. This script compresses keys and ref in your own trade history. It's very useful to quickly determine how many keys were involved in a trade that you made, instead of counting the number of keys in a very long screenshot. https://github.com/dyhli/plugin-bottf-stats-bptf This is kind of a dumb script that I still have. The reason I have it is because it disables the graphs of "Number in existence", "Level Distribution" as well as "Paints" and "Strange Parts" It's kind of a really dumb "quality of life" script so I scroll less when I want to make a suggestion. You really don't need this but when I livestream how I make a suggestion, this'll explain why I don't have those graphs. Finally here's a nice quality of life script made by Poespas ( Team 2) https://pastebin.com/bkbMjdnL - you need make this a script yourself via the following steps - https://imgur.com/a/hERyvls What this script does is that for the suggestors that create price suggestions right inside the suggestion box, the progress is saved if you either accidentally Ctrl + R the tab (You would lose all your progress if you accidentally refreshed the page) or close the tab and can't Ctrl + Shift + T the tab back. It's an excellent QOL script which has helped me to keep track of suggestions and have them autosaved. (I still save my suggestions in word documents that are saved to my PC, but that's really for personal and formatting reasons. These are the scripts that I use whenever I make a price suggestion, really, I'd probably die without them. Thanks to all the creators of these awesome scripts. Much love. Alright, the actual content of the post: Okay, you've downloaded all the scripts I've recommended you install and now you are ready to try your hand at making your first Unusual Price Suggestion. What hat do you want to price suggest? Maybe it's a hat you just traded for and you want to price it since you paid more than it's outdated backpack.tf price. Note: You do NOT need backpack.tf premium to make unusual price suggestions, though it certainly speeds up the process, there are more than enough people active and willing inside the backpack.tf discord to provide the necessary indate histories for you if you ask politely. Let's take the Purple Energy Noble Amassment of Hats as an example. First, find the stats page of the Unusual in question. https://backpack.tf/stats/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10 You want to hover over the unusual and select "Search" This should bring you to the following page: https://backpack.tf/premium/search?item=Noble Amassment of Hats&quality=5&tradable=1&craftable=1&australium=-1&particle=10&killstreak_tier=0 I can't show this page in screenshots since that would be sharing premium information to other users, but with Julia's Premium Sales Finder script, the histories highlighted in Green mean that the history has moved in the past 60 days and the histories highlighted in Orange have moved in the past 60 - 90 days. At this point, I would advise you scroll click/ctrl + left click all the histories that have moved in the past 90 days and get them all lined up on your browser so you don't have to keep going back and forth. "ah, but aj, there's a duped history where it's green/orange, what do I do now?!!" I would still recommend you open the history in a new tab, duped histories can be used to price Unusuals under the value of 30 keys; they can also be used to raise the price of an unusual if there have not been any clean sales and in some circumstances, also be used to determine if an unusual should be priced based off clean sales of the Unusual in question. Your browser should look something like this. Next, I go back to the stats page and scroll down until I reach the "Suggestions" heading. Here you want to click on the blue Plus sign - "Create a new suggestion" https://backpack.tf/vote/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10 - this brings you to this page and if you have the autosaving script, things should be a breeze from here on out. Note: You can make this box bigger, yes some people did not realise that! https://gyazo.com/91f10fafc6763b365c204d8b92234e3b - just follow this gif, I tend to make the box a decent size based off how many histories I have, it comes with time and experience. Alright, now we can get started with actually typing something substantial. I lied again, we haven't quite yet got to how to actually make the price suggestion, I'm just going to nitpick about formatting. There are a lot of times where I've checked suggestions inside the backlog that have been so terribly formatted I honestly don't want to dig through the suggestion. It's really not difficult to at least incorporate some spacing inside a price suggestion, quite frankly, 95% of poorly formatted suggestions could be fixed with line breaks and adequate spacing. I follow a fairly basic formatting for my suggestions. First line: If the Unusual is a mini for another hat, I will say "Mini for x". If the price suggestion was requested by a certain user, then I'd typically say "Requested by x" and if the suggestion was created off my own whims, then I'll try to make something witty up on the spot. "yeet" also works great. Make your price suggestions more like these: https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f1766df5d468f33311de382 https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f1bb40afae498368d512826 https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f8d31388ef48e2a516c16c4 https://backpack.tf/suggestion/6002116d070b84216b3f5c75 rather than this: https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f17666734b8795dd776c532 I would always recommend you provide both the seller and buyer compare links, and specifically in that order since it's easier to check sales using near ID that way. Backpack.tf uses BBCode as formatting for boldening, underlining and more. I would really avoid using the custom link one, it's a bit of a faff and really not worth the set up. Italics can spice things up sometimes I sometimes use strikethrough when it's a resuggestion and sales have changed but it's not necessary. Go crazy, just remember, efficiency is also very important, especially during events. Back to the actual suggestion, reminder, hat is Purple Energy Noble, I forgot it after typing the formatting stuff out. Here is my set up, I copy paste the first item history that came up when I premium searched the unusual and indicate the first sale I will be looking at. I go in this order since it is important for when using the "Near ID" function. Really this should have it's own forums post but I'll do it here. You will open the following compare links: https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198063438304#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800 https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199157082802#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800 Now, you'll notice the hat actually cannot be seen at all. This typically happens when an unusual is traded extremely quickly. It should also be noted that the "buyer" in this instance is actually marked on backpack.tf as being a suspected alt of a site banned account: Whether the site banned account was banned for having an NSFW profile picture, banned for scamming, or banned for trading/gambling with scammers, we will never know. I try to not use sales with most site banned people unless there is good reason to include it, e.g. they aren't banned for scamming someone. Near ID: Copy the buyer's ID number and paste it into the SELLER'S compare link: https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198063438304#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800 - this one https://gyazo.com/8c2c5cac69e3bc7da4acc40245fae5d3 - here is a gif showing how to do it, you can press the "Enter" key after pasting the number in to check which items match ID. Matching ID means that it is highly likely that those items were involved in the trade. I don't want to go into specifics here since really, it deserves its own forums guide but that's just how Near ID works. As we can see, the 53 keys match, so I would say "Sold for 53 keys, suspect buyer, on the fence of using the sales" And then we move to the second sale, do the exact same thing. Opening seller's compare link and then buyer's compare link and checking ID. https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199157082802#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800 https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199125348079#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800 Sold for 43 keys "aj, I tried finding the sale using Near ID and nothing matches, what do I do now, I'm having a panic att-" Some of the time, the sale is just untraceable and there isn't anything you can do. Sometimes the sale might have occurred via Steam Community Market, Marketplace, Mannco or cash was involved. Most of the time, it's due to an item moving too quickly but another very plausible reason is the hat is being dumped to other bot buy orders. As we can see in the same PE Noble history - https://backpack.tf/item/9934169582, the 3 recent users in the history are all bots so the logical conclusion is that the owners of the bots have taken the unusual off the bot and redumped it to get keys back etc etc. These can just be marked as "untrace" but you can also use gladiator stats to determine the bot buy order dumps that happened here: https://gladiator.tf/sales?item=Purple Energy Noble Amassment of Hats Make sure to select the "permanent link" for the page if you are using it in a suggestion https://gladiator.tf/sales?item=Purple Energy Noble Amassment of Hats&at=2021-08-29T23:00:55.614Z (Example) Bot buy orders can be trusted for the most part. and they seem to match up pretty well. You can also check snapshots on the day and cross check if the bot buy order is the same as the sale in the history. Sometimes if a bot has a buy order on an unusual and that unusual is offered in bulk on another item the bot owns, the gladiator bot will treat the unusual offered in bulk as if it was purchased at that buy order amount. So always make sure to double check if compare links aren't completely clear! So far, you should be up to here: https://imgur.com/a/fVPkwZM - I have to resort to imgur albums now, reached the max total size of files I think Next, you move onto the next history and do the appropriate formatting and continue checking sales. Luckily for us the PE Noble didn't sell for any other unusuals or items for that purpose. It means you've successfully manoeuvred having to make any minis and pure sales galore! What a win. The only snag in this whole operation is the duped sales. One of the duped histories sold on Marketplace: https://backpack.tf/item/264377094 https://marketplace.tf/items/tf2/137;5;u10 We can't be completely certain which sale it was in July, but we can try to find out which one it is by looking at the buyer's compare links. https://imgur.com/a/fJSiEQt - you want to click this link and start fiddling with the dates. Since the sales on Marketplace were July 16th and July 24th, we are checking to see when the PE Noble enters the buyers inventory. https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198348930851#!/compare/1625875200/1626480000 As we can see here, the PE Noble enters the inventory between July 10th and July 17th meaning that the DUPED PE Noble sold on Marketplace on July 16th meaning we should really exclude that sale from the suggestion. You can still make a note of it but you can't use it to make a range in this case. It'll still definitely be used as support. The other DUPED history for the PE Noble also is not a sale. https://backpack.tf/item/231121586 In a clean history, as well as a duped history, the ID on the left should always go up since the item is moving from inventory to inventory / nametagged / description tagged / painted. But a duped history has multiple versions of the same hat moving at varying times and is getting logged from inventories all over the place. In this case: https://imgur.com/a/Fa2sZ2Z The ID goes down meaning the hat itself has not moved. You can confirm this by checking both users inventories. https://imgur.com/a/QTSZR33 The PE Noble had a HIDDEN HISTORY, this is typically when an item is traded onto Marketplace and the Marketplace bot has not been refreshed meaning the history has "disappeared" from premium search. This can also happen when an item is listed on the Steam Community Market and other relevant bot trading sites. Wrapping up the suggestion Great, you have all the sales conveniently typed out and (fingers crossed) fully analysed. But this is where formatting will once again come in clutch. It is always to your own benefit that you re-type all the sales at the end in a "final conclusion / summary" of sorts. In a suggestion as lengthy as this one, I typically open up notepad and have it hovering over the suggestion box to record what sales were in an easy fashion. https://gyazo.com/152968c592930a9b4324155d5e60490e - gif of what I mean here I copy paste the sales under a separate heading. At this stage, the sales aren't in a specific order. https://miniwebtool.com/sort-numbers/ I use this tool to copy paste the sales I have in order to have them in "ascending order" https://imgur.com/a/W9Lx03w Finally, I have my sales in order and can conclude the suggestion with some reasonings as to which sales to be included or not. Since the first 53 key buy dumped for "43 keys" seemingly, it seems fitting to exclude the 53 key sale as well as the 43 key dump since it is under current buy orders. https://backpack.tf/stats/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10 - it's now important to check out the current listings of the unusual https://imgur.com/a/wvQXh8S - I'd personally recommend clicking on the "bumped x minutes ago" to find when an item was listed. This is sometimes important when making ranges to see how long an unusual has been unsold for. This can be cross checked with gladiator snapshots or checking the history of an unusual to see how long it has been listed at x amount. In this case, there are 3 bots at 56, 56 and 57 keys respectively. Buyers are now just shy of 50 keys so from our sales, we can determine that the optimal range to be pulled is likely 54 - 55 keys, 61 seems high with the 3 sellers at 57 and less, and 53 dumped for less as well as suspicious buyer. This typically comes with experience, if you are having a hard time pulling a range, feel free to join the backpack.tf discord and ask in #suggestion-discussion, ping price mods if you are desparate, I've definitely bugged them a lot over ranges. Scroll back up to change the "Low Value" to 54 and the "High Value" to 55 - https://imgur.com/a/5Ri2ZMT Then scroll back down and click "Create Suggestion" - https://imgur.com/a/vHDf6l6 https://backpack.tf/suggestion/612c17d99cc2833d5f2ec3f2 - Tada, your suggestion is complete. Conclusions from the guide I hope the step by step was somewhat followable. Honestly, without an example, it would've been a lot more waffle. Hopefully it is a digestible guide and enough to get you raring to make your first unusual price suggestion! aj out, see you at the livestream.

EDIT: - Oct 4 2020 Updates on - Types of scams - how to avoid getting scammed - website links - discord links - corrected typos - removed outdated stuff 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 onward 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 is 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. Trading Website Backpack.tf https://backpack.tf/ 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 Owned by https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198054758757 & his team https://mannco.trade/ Quicsell.Store Owned by https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198337734785 & his team quicksell.store is a new tf2 trading site. https://quicksell.store/ TF2 Store https://tf2.store/ Owned by https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198153088409 & his team 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/ Rain.tf Another TF2 trading website https://rain.tf/ 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/ Tradeit.gg You can trade multiple items here https://tradeit.gg/ 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/ TF2 Cashing out websites Marketplace.tf Always the best (run by the same owners as that of bacpack.tf and scrap.tf) https://marketplace.tf/ Bitskins https://bitskins.com/ Mannco.store https://mannco.store/ CS Deals has a tf2 section https://cs.deals/ TF2 Trading Bot websites Tired of trading manually? - check out these trading bot websites. I have also linked their discord links below Bot.tf (paid) https://bot.tf/ Tf2automatic (free) https://tf2automatic.com/ Scrippy.tf (Paid) https://scrippy.tf/ Discord Links backpack.tf https://discord.gg/j7cMkGF marketplace.tf https://discord.gg/kr8MU2C scrap.tf https://discord.gg/PEXZzZ4 STN https://discord.gg/NYaUV9Z manco.trade https://discord.gg/Z5CPczg Bot.tf https://discord.gg/3cMFRfW TF2automatic https://discord.gg/93wH4T2 Scrippy https://discord.gg/Gcy7KQf Quicksell.store https://discord.gg/qyT6K3f Spell Trading Discord https://discord.gg/RhfxSDS Best place to discuss and find offers for your items that have spells. You will also find a lot of people who are selling spelled items here and you will find almost every big spell collectors here. 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. 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 among 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 BS. 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. Bitskins 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 bitskins and asks the victim to list their item in Bitskins and convince them to do it. While the victim is doing this the scammer sends a trade offer from their alt account named "Bitskins Bot 5" or something similar tricking the user into believing that the trade offer actually came from the Bitskins 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. DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS ON THE STEAM CHAT WINDOW Read more here - https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/hijacking/ 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. 12. Social Media Scam Scammers will have groups relating to trading on various social media like facebook, and they will show you many fake reputation comments and screenshots to make you believe that they are a very reputed person. Do not fall for this. What happens here is that they will ask you to go first and send them the item and they will say "you will get your money in your paypal" after I have received the item. You believe them seeing all the fake rep send the item to them and they RUN A simple thing to remember - never talk about a steam trade outside of steam client chat window. Any reputation they show you will mostly be fake. 13. Festive / Festivized Scam This is another common scam method, where a user will send a random trade offer with Festivized Item instead of festive. They will look same in game but they are different by item. A festive item is unboxed, A festivzed item is applying a festivizer to a weapon Here is a screenshot of a scam attempt. This is a festivized scattergun and not festive. https://backpack.tf/stats/Strange/Festive Scattergun/Tradable/Craftable <---------- Strange Festive Scattergun https://backpack.tf/stats/Strange/Festivized Scattergun/Tradable/Craftable <----- Strange Festivized Scattergun Check the item on both the links carefully and understand the difference in price. A festivized item will have it written in item description as Festivized in yellow color and a festive item will have the name as Festive Item name, make sure the name is not in between " " because then the item was renamed. 14. Duped item / Accidentally reported you / Item verificaiton This is a very stupid scam attempt where the scammer tries to convince you that you have duplicated items and they will need to be checked by a steam admin and should be passed though a steam database bot, or the conversation will start like sorry I accidentally reported you for having duplicate items. This is a scam, there is no such thing as steam admin or steam databse bots. The steam admin will also threaten you to delete your steam account & show you fake edited screenshots of your account with a delete account button, Do not believe any of this. Read more here - https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/about-item-checking-scam/ 15. Steam API Key Scam Credits to - https://marketplace.tf/blog/posts/YHLZOB A new attack designed to bypass the Steam Mobile Authenticator. What's worse, the attack makes it appear as if legitimate traders and services have scammed users, when in fact these legitimate traders never received any trades at all. Here's how the attack works: The attacker manages to get the victim to enter their Steam username and password on a phishing website; additionally, they gain a single login code as part of the phish. Although they can now login and control your account, they do not have the ability to confirm trades. Sometime after gaining access to your account, the attacker poses as a trade asking the victim to trade their items to a trade service, such as Marketplace.tf / Bitskins / Scrap.tf etc The user is instructed to click the deposit link directly from these legit websites, which leads them to the trade offer page of a legitimate site bot. The user sends a trade offer depositing their items to a real site bot. Nobody has been scammed yet and this is where the scam really kicks in As soon as the user sends the trade offer to the real bot, the Scammers cancel the trade offer (remember, they have access to the victim's account, just not their mobile authenticator app) and send an identical trade offer to a different account that looks exactly like the intended recipient. By the time the victim has loaded their Steam Mobile Authenticator confirmations page, the trade offers will already have been swapped. They will see a confirmation for a trade that looks exactly like the one they sent to the real recipient -- but it's the fake one. They confirm it, and their items are never seen again. It's important to note that this process can be done for any trade offer your account sends after being hijacked -- any time you send an item to someone else, they could swap the trade offers and you would be none the wiser. Therefore, if your account has been hijacked, simply avoiding trading with bots or suspicious individuals is not adequate protection. Phishing sites can be extremely convincing and anyone can fall victim to them. After being hijacked, any trade offer you send can be hijacked What to do if I get hijacked? 1. Change password immediately, and also change it anywhere else you have the same password set. The scammer will try to log into your email with it when he loses access. Changing password will force their current login session on your account to be terminated. They will lose access to your account, and you will be safe. Even if you don't think you've been hijacked you should consider changing your password every 6 months or once a year. Additionally, changing your password does not give you a temporary trade suspension, as many believe; rather, resetting your password through the "forgot password" menu temporarily suspends you from trading on Steam. Properly changing your password has no penalty. 2. De-authorize all other devices here: https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage 3. Revoke any API keys set. Their only use, if you don't know what it is, is keeping control of your account. https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey Many times, the account hijackers will set up an API key on your account in order to efficiently control it. Unless you specifically remember setting up your API key for a specific task, you do not need one. Even if you do need one, the attackers have almost definitely stolen it, so you should generate a new one to ensure they cannot use it. 4. If this still doesn't resolve the issue, contact Steam Support at https://help.steampowered.com/ How to avoid all the above scams & Scammers 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 DO NOT talk about a steam trade outside the steam window such as Discord or any social media 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 I will also link some useful stuff here. Help! Is this site a scam? https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/scam-sites/ Pre-Trade check lists https://steamrep.com/tips/pretrade If you wish to trade via paypal - here is a useful guide you should read before you do your 1st paypal trade 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/ and finally also read this https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/commonscams/ 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" 10$ is all I spent in TF2 and I have cashed out over 1000's of $ 5$ to buy my 1st 2 keys and 5$ to buy my 1st 4 mvm tickets! 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) My backpack on March 12 - 2016 Started off with 2 keys bought from the steam market https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523?time=1457769600 & My Backpack on April 27 - 2016 Got an 8 Key Fab from mvm sold for 6 keys.These were my initial Investment in Trading https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198078552523?time=1461715200 "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 DM 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

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Getting started Hey there, since I know that not everyone knows how to do background checks, I thought I'd make a guide on how to do it based on what I personally do myself. In this day and age where anyone can pretend to be someone they're not, it's important to do a minimum amount of research on the people you trade with, especially if you trade on a regular basis and/or do any form of cash/risky trades. Installing and configuring the tools What you'll need to install : Augmented Steam (https://augmentedsteam.com/) Tampermonkey (or any equivalent userscript manager, such as Violentmonkey/Greasemonkey) https://www.tampermonkey.net/ Steam Trade Offer Enhancer (aka Julia's script, Tampermonkey required to install) https://github.com/juliarose/steam-trade-offer-enhancer/blob/master/steam.trade.offer.enhancer.user.js?raw=true By default, Augmented Steam offers handy links and the ability to have third-party links of profiles for websites such as Backpack.tf. On top of this, any SteamRep banned profile becomes much more obvious when you visit their profile (see screenshots below) While this is a good start, it's not enough to do thorough background checks. We'll go in the Augmented Steam options in the top right corner to do a few adjustments. Once that's done, download this configuration file (I will keep this updated if necessary): https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ1QsWXZJW7YGLkvcuh40uLI6f1gHXTnaIGy then click on Import in the bottom right corner of the configuration page (see screenshot below) Select the downloaded configuration file and click on Open. Augmented Steam should tell you that the import was successful. Basic background checking (the fun part) Now that we've gone through the process of installing Augmented Steam and Julia's script, I will now show how easy it is to background check someone. Let's say that you get a trade offer from someone. Julia's script gives you two easily accessible buttons to use along many other features (which are not the main focus of the guide). The first button links to that person's backpack and the second button links you to a rep.tf page of that same person. If someone has been banned on backpack.tf and or on SteamRep, you will see that their name was striked through. On rep.tf, it will show that the person was banned from one or more communities. Please note that some bans aren't always related to scamming offenses but will still show up for you to see and judge for yourself. Deep background checking (highly recommended for cash traders and experienced traders) Why am I recommending this "deep" background check? While some scammers are obvious and already banned, some try to stay under the radar and pull off large scams (typically exit scams, paypal scams, etc) Let's take this person for example. They posted that they were buying and selling keys, however there were multiple signs that an exit scam was going to happen months before it even happened. If you take a quick look at his backpack and old trust, you would think that person is fine. However, if you take a closer look at his backpack and trust, you can notice that he quickly gained trust and was buying/selling keys exclusively (no unusual trading, etc) https://web.archive.org/web/20201216201319/https://backpack.tf/trust/76561198038550904 On top of this, this account was purchased/stolen to look like a normal old profile. You can tell just by the sudden surge in activity after all those years. You can tell by using these websites: steamid.uk, vacbanned.com, SteamRep The account is 10 years, suddenly starts doing high tier trading and history on Backpack.tf and SteamRep only goes back a few months. From all this information, we can tell that this user is highly suspicious and cannot be trusted even if they're not banned anywhere. In summary, you can use the links from the Augmented Steam extension to check a person's presence on other websites like the ones I mentioned above. This guide is not 100% complete (as you can tell from all the links below), but this should help tremendously weed out any bad actors.

I am tired of counting refs and keys, so is there any websites or script that can help me with that?

Hey guys, I just posted the first video Guide to Minimizing Loss from Unboxing for my channel. I plan to do more videos primarily on TF2 economy and trading. If you have an idea for a video, then please let me know. Discord: Encel#2996

I know this will sound like a stupid question, but on trade servers like FP I often see people stacking say, 2 Blast Defense or other quickswitches with a hat. Google/Steam Community yielded me methods that didn't work and the people on FP weren't any help in my asking. The pictured fellow didn't respond either. What's the methodology here? I have 2 blast's I'd like to stack with the 3rd effect hat, even though I know it's only temporary, just to see what the combo would look like. Thanks in advance

So A few Weeks ago I bought a Specialized Killstreak Festive Stickybomb for like 1 key 40 Refind, and now bots are selling it for 2 keys 20 ref+ and buy orders are 1 key 24 ref, and what's crazy about this whole thing is the fact that ref has decreased in value so they're supposed to actually pay more ref so I'm just confused, and I also bought a Spec KS Medigun a few weeks ago for like 1 key and now bots are selling it fo 2 keys and they're buying it for 50 ref, I have no idea what's going on but what I do know is mass price fixing is something that shouldn't be tolerated... And I'd really love to add to this whole thread the fact that we need a mass repricing for items, because if Refind has decreased in value everything should maintain it's value and get it's price more realistic to the metal->key Ratio.. (Or in other words Jeff bought a Hat for 20 Refind (0.80 USD) back when keys were 46 ref and ref was 0.04 USD, Jeff Leaves TF2 for a while and gets back to the game and finds out keys are 62 ref now, Jeff tries to sell his 0.80 USD hat and sell other items to get to a key and gets surprised by the fact that his hat is still 20 ref when in reality it should be 27 ref because refind has become 0.03 usd (27x0.03=0.80 USD) Essentially what I'm tying to say is that people who have items on them rn are getting there cheeks spread widely and are getting ripped off because they're unable to move there items without losing money, so idk what's the best thing to do right now in your opinion lads like should a person with low tier items right now keep hold of them until prices get changed or should he quicksell them and cover his/her losses by buying pure and leaving it to get his ref back with time

I make a coomplette loadout and/ or collection for you, from design to final trade, based on whatever mood/ theme/ item/ whateva you want. Theme music will also be provided at random intervals throughout the process, and custom naming/ description is also included if so desired. Examples of my completed commisons: None yet! Be the first. Examples of my present (personal) loadouts/ collections: https://prnt.sc/voulpl https://prnt.sc/vousfn https://prnt.sc/voussr https://prnt.sc/vout4b https://prnt.sc/voutco https://prnt.sc/vp13jy https://prnt.sc/vp14j6 My #19/ #93/ #1993 Craft collection My Deadly Daffodil/ Singularity collection (with a Singularity Pro KS unusual and Spec KS Collector's Gunboats) My past loadouts/ collections: Complete set of retired hats with Circling Heart https://prnt.sc/vs6k0y My mixes: MY RATES: I charge an up front flat fee of 25 refined per loadout. Name and description are 2 ref per item extra, or 3 for both. Should you want me to do the trading, I charge a 10% commission based on the total cost of the loadout that will be payable on delivery of the completed set. I also have the option for Mystery Loadouts! You tell me the theme and budget, pay me the commission fee up front (this will not be refundable after 24 hours), and I will put something together for you within a month (three months if you request the loadout contain an unusual or weapon skin). I can also put something together with CS/ DotA/ any other game with tradable content, although my fee will be 5% greater for those games (at least at first) as I will have to do a bit of research on those markets in addition to services rendered.

I make a coomplette loadout and/ or collection for you, from design to final trade, based on whatever mood/ theme/ item/ whateva you want. Theme music will also be provided at random intervals throughout the process, and custom naming/ description is also included if so desired. Examples of my completed commisons: None yet! Be the first. Examples of my present (personal) loadouts/ collections: https://prnt.sc/voulpl https://prnt.sc/vousfn https://prnt.sc/voussr https://prnt.sc/vout4b https://prnt.sc/voutco My #19/ #93/ #1993 Craft collection My Deadly Daffodil/ Singularity collection (with a Singularity Pro KS unusual and Spec KS Collector's Gunboats) My past loadouts/ collections: Complete set of retired hats with Circling Heart https://prnt.sc/vouqqs with Purple/ Green Spec KS Collector's Festive Jarate and Bushwacka My mixes: MY RATES: I charge an up front flat fee of 25 refined per loadout. Name and description are 2 ref per item extra, or 3 for both. Should you want me to do the trading, I charge a 10% commission based on the total cost of the loadout that will be payable on delivery of the completed set. I also have the option for Mystery Loadouts! You tell me the theme and budget, pay me the commission fee up front (this will not be refundable after 24 hours), and I will put something together for you within a month (three months if you request the loadout contain an unusual or weapon skin). I can also put something together with CS/ DotA/ any other game with tradable content, although my fee will be 5% greater for those games (at least at first) as I will have to do a bit of research on those markets in addition to services rendered.

For some problems with uploading this, i never finish this, i can't delete it then it will be closed only sorry guys \:(

So I want to make a discord bot that scrapes buy orders and sell orders from backpack.tf. Is it possible to use something like selenium if I already have the API key with elevated access, or do I have to learn how to use their API?

What would be the ~price of a Prof KS Eyelander kit and what tier (Prof KS) would it be considered as (Flames + Hot Rod)? Killstreaker: Flames Sheen: Hot Rod Thanks

What would be the ~price of a Strange Prof KS Huntsman and what tier (Prof KS) would it be considered as (Tornado + Team Shine)? Killstreaker: Tornado Sheen: Team Shine Thanks

Special thanks to J58/Payback for his original list. I revised it slightly, and also added in newer effects. S / God Tier: Arcana Spellbound Bonzo the All Gnawing Hellfire Darkblaze Demonflame Knifestorm Chiroptera Venenata Poisoned Shadows Something Burning this Way Comes A / God-High Tier: It's a Secret to Everybody Stormy 13th Hour Harvest Moon Cloudy Moon Burning Flames Scorching Flames Antifreeze Roboactive Green Black Hole Time Warp Misty Skull Frostbite Nebula Galactic Gateway Eldritch Opening Dark Doorway Amaranthine Ooze Stare From Beyond Morning Glory Death at Dusk B / High-Mid Tier: Sulphorous Frozen Icefall Twisted Radiance Eerie Orbiting Fire Phosphorus Fifth Dimension Fragmented Photons Death by Disco Sunbeams Green Energy Purple Energy Haunted Phantasm Jr. Ghastly Ghosts Jr. Abduction Mystical Medley Abyssal Aura Ring of Fire Vicious Circle Brain Drain Clairvoyance Disco Beat Down Sparkling Lights Snowfallen Circling Heart Ethereal Essence Ether Trail Menacing Miasma Fragmented Quarks Ghastly Grove Ancient Eldritch Eldritch Flame Nether Trail Vicious Circle Fragmented Gluons Head of Steam Wicked Wood White Lightning Snowblinded Tesla Coil C / Mid - Low Tier: Fragmenting Reality Starstorm Slumber Verdant Vortex Pyroland Daydream It's a Mystery To Everyone It's a Puzzle to Me Defragmenting Reality Valiant Vortex Haunted Ghosts Molted Mallard Omniscient Orb Neutron Star Blizzardy Storm Open Mind Violet Vortex Cloud 9 Starstorm Insomnia Flaming Lantern Stormy Storm Atomic Subatomic Vivid Plasma D / Low Tier: Circling TF Logo Circling Peace Sign Miami Nights Cauldron Bubbles Searing Plasma Smoking Steaming Bubbling Purple Confetti Green Confetti Electrostatic Power Surge F / Trash Tier: Orbiting Fire Electric Hat Protector Magnetic Hat Protector Voltaic Hat Protector Nuts N' Bolts Kill-a-Watt Terror-Watt Massed Flies Orbiting Planets Aces High Dead Presidents Memory Leak Overclocked Ancient Codex Galactic Codex To Be Determined: Chromatica Verdatica Aromatica Prismatica Kaleidoscope Frisky Fireflies Smoldering Spirits Wandering Wisps Bee Swarm

If you happen to be an unusual seller and some dude adds you to explain to you that he has a Lucky No. 42 as item overpay for your unusual; don't accept his trade offer without checking if it's uncraftable first. The guy I talked to admitted that he scammed 5 people in a few hours with this

its a gen one unusual AND its a good hat please share

Hello i am newish to unusual weapons but i have no idea how much these go for any ideas?

I apologize for the price checking post, but I happened to get my hands on this Genuine Professional killstreak Original with the Exorcism and Pumpkin Bomb spell (Flames, Team shine) recently. Since I only got back into the trading scene recently, I have no clue how spelled items are priced. Anyone got an idea of a realistic price/ballpark I could sell it for? Thanks so much

Hey, yes as the title suggests, I made a simple guide about glitched genuines that have a different level to default, I know it sounds boring cause it is, probably people like me who are into glitched stuff, rarities/oddities will like this one. Anyways I'll link it here if anyone cares! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2146850921

Hello everyone, I have been getting into trading and unusual trading recently and i know quiet a bit about about unusual effects and there desirability but I have no clue how to do this with new effects. ( anything after scream fortress 2019 ) so if someone or some people could either make one for me or link me one. I have looked myself but i could not locate an updated one. Thanks.

Man, Valve sucks.And everytime they don't take action or make some stupid deccision the community always seems to shine brighter. Since the "new" botwave began and they didn't lift a finger the community feels even stronger with people insta kicking the bots without anybody saying anything. I'm sure even the fact that they stopped support will in the end bring more good than bad somehow. Aaaaaanyyway sry for the long rant. I felt like i never actually given anything back in the game before and i just went on random servers and gave like 10 hats and war paints to random people and they were all so happy and most said i just made their day. That's like 15 ref or smth, like 30 cents, it's nothing and i just imagine how happy it would've made me feel if this happened to me when i started. And i feel like we should make these kind of gestures especially to new players so they keep playing despite valve and bots and a few toxic players and scammers. On one server a guy even sent me items to spread the love after he saw what i was doing was not a scam. TLDR: SO I GOT THIS IDEEA I made this group, we can each get a few keys, turn them to ref and either leave them like this or turn them into hats. We all make a party, and join server after server and just GIFT AWAY HATS, REF, CHEAP BOTKILLERS, WAR PAINTS anything that would make someone's day. If you buy a key through paypal that's like 1.6€. A key is 52 ref. You can give away like almost 40 1.33 hats with ONE KEY. ONE KEY!! that's like 5 SECONDS of gambling in uncrating or Spycrabbing or tf2hunt https://steamcommunity.com/groups/WEGIFTF

Eerie orbiting fire a rather festive tree With spell Horseless headless horseshoes No clue what these are valued or how much spells increase

Hello guys and girls, I quit tf2 trading for a few years but still played. I used to trade when outpost was up then i cashed out. I read about the crate depression and everything but i'm cobfused about the way prices are estimated now. I see an unusual sold for 300$ on mp.tf, 100 keys on bp.tf or vice versa and it has buyouts of 60$. Are buyoffers the new quickbuys from back in the day? Honestly i want to buy an allclass low/mid tier one to wear not to make profit but i would also like to know that i don't loose or at least don't loose too much when/if i want to cash out again. For instance a sunbeams/plasma executioner seems reasonable compared to the prices i remember from back in the day but i don't want to pay 300$ and then have to sell it for 60. Many thanks to anyone who takes the time to answear. It's for a good cause i guess, cause i just want a hat to wear not to profit. Also any examples would be absolutely helpful

Can someone tell me how much it is worth pls because i realised that it is a unusuaul item but its also a achievement item so idk