Guide to finding sales for TF2 items

[Jacobmeister]

If you lurk around bp.tf enough, you'll see pretty often that there are quite a few suggestions for unusuals which do not actually have any sales. Whilst you may not need sales, it's rather rare and sales are the backbone of any unusual suggestion. As there isn't a guide on how to actually track a sale, I'm going to show you my way of doing it.

 

NOTE: You can theoretically find sales for any item this way, but it's most applicable for unusuals, and as such that's how I show it. This is not a guide for making an unusual suggestion, but more of a guide to making up some of it. I'd also like to add that this is assuming we have no idea what the sale is.

 

First off, we need to find an item to update. Here I've chosen the Roboactive Modest Pile of Hat:

 

 

Now, if we want to find a sale for this hat, we need to grab the history of it. There are multiple ways to do this, but we'll go through Outpost as we can possibly find more than one (to do this, hover over the item's icon and click "Outpost" on that little pop-up, it'll open the search results for it on Outpost)

 

And indeed, there are two on Outpost (let's just focus on the top one for now, though):

 

 

If we click on the top Modest's icon, we get a whole bunch of details on the hat:

 

 

The main part we want is down the bottom, underneath History. You can see the IDs of the item when it was traded over to the next person. Over time, you'll get a feel for how far apart or how long ago they had this item but that's a whole other thing.

 

So, now what? We click on the person who last owned this hat, which re-directs us to their Outpost profile:

 

 

Most of the time, they'll have had a trade up for their hat, and then closed it once it sold. So, we then scroll through their trades until we come along to the hat we want:

 

 

Perfect! So now we have the OP trade for this hat. Looking at the trade, there was a B/O of 205, also. It's a good idea to scroll through the comments to find any evidence of a sale. Indeed:

 

 

So, it looks like it sold for 170 keys! That's half the battle though. If we want to use this sale in a suggestion, it's best to show actual evidence that it sold for that amount. You never know what can change between that offer and the trade. For this, we'll need backpack histories.

 

Let's go back to Gumbercules' profile. At the top, under the username, click on "SR+". This will re-direct us to the SteamRep+ profile of the person:

 

 

There's plenty of information on  here, but we only need his user ID, which is automatically highlighted above his profile overview. Let's copy that for later (Ctrl+C, if you didn't already know... somehow)

 

Now, in a new window, open up backpack.tf. Paste the user ID into the search bar, aaaaaanddd....

 

 

Just like magic, it's Gumbercules! By clicking on that user, their backpack will show up for us. Beautiful, simply beautiful. Now, we'll need to find his backpack on the day of the sale, so we'll use Historical View. In this case, the 170 key offer was made on April the 9th, so we'll go to that date and sort by time, which will sort the backpack with the newest item IDs coming up top (handy for finding certain sales):

 

 

Oh mama, that's a lot of keys. By hovering over one and clicking "History" we can confirm that it came from the Modest buyer, BUT if you have Julia's backpack history comparison script ( http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/33627-user-script-compare-differences-between-inventory-snapshots-and-more/) we can isolate all 170 keys to confirm it.

 

And there you go, a fully valid sale for use in a suggestion! If you want to use it in a suggestion, it's a good idea to paste over the links of the backpack before the sale, the backpack after the sale, and the outpost trade. (Don't forget, the sale can't be too old. If you want more information on how to make a suggestion, refer to this: http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/6033-guide-for-unusual-price-suggestions/

 

NOTE: It's worth knowing that if hats sell rather quickly, sometimes items may come in and out of backpacks faster than the backpack is updated. This may mean that sometimes, it doesn't make sense what the hat sold for - in this case there's really no other way to track that sale apart from adding the buyer / seller. Thanks to Derpeh for reminding me of this

 

There are other ways to find sales, some of which may be faster, but this has worked for over 150+ of my suggestions, and I've gotten rather quick at it now. If you have any questions, queries, or anything to add on, feel free to comment.

[Timmy The Darn Danger]

Nice guide!

[1+1=3 ?]

That's why i never make an unusual suggestion. It takes so much time to gather proof than normal item suggestion.

Btw, it's a very good guide for the new comers

[knavesmith]

Used a Modest Pile of Hat with a good effect as an example. 10/10

 

Definitely a useful guide for those struggling with making Unusual suggestions or looking to help in repricing everything.

[♥Prof. Sugarcube♥]

An easier way is to get the hat's history on outpost then copy over;

 

The secondary way to finding sales

 

1. Get a version of the hat you're pricing

 

2. Copy the Original ID into the Backpack.tf item id finder using the url backpack.tf/item/[iD]

 

Steps 3-6 below

[♥Prof. Sugarcube♥]

3. Compare a backpack history between where the hat was present and when the hat isn't.

 

I will be using Promotor's sale. The sale is too old to be used in a real suggestion though, 2 months is the oldest it can be.

 

If the hat is present in the inventory, flip to the next day then click "Sort by time", or use Julia's software

 

If the hat is not present, just click "Sort by time"

 

4. Investigate every item of notable worth. Keys, buds, Unusuals, Australiums, Strange Festives, professional killstreaks etc. Sort by time allows the latest items to enter the backpack to show up first.

 

 

Backpack.tf histories are not 100% reliable though. Sometimes reverse searching (Looking at histories of the buyer's BP) can give ideas of what was traded.

From this example it is apparent it sold for the Scorching Bombing, 3 buds and some keys. However this is false. Because of Step 5.

 

5. Look at the items' histories to determine if the person who bought said unusual is in the name of the items he used to buy it. in this example we are looking for Jay's name, as well as Promotor's.

 

To save time, i'll give what it sold for; 3 buds.

How do i know this?

 

Bud 1

Bud 2

Bud 3

 

Jay's name appears in all 3 buds.

 

Therefore, X = 3 buds worth at the time of sale, give or take some overpay.

 

6. Check the outpost trades of the items involved for any B/Os!

 

I've been caught unguarded by B/Os so many times, it's important to know this

 

 

This trade has no B/O, therefore, no restrictions are needed.

 

Items can never be worth more than their B/O.

 

 

That's the other way <3

[Jacobmeister]

-snip-

I never actually knew that way of doing it, pasting the original ID. TIL <3

[Kypari]

Pretty good guide to the both of you ^^

[Roller]

Most easiest way but you might find it inconvenient: Just add somebody and ask how much they bought for it.

[♠Derpeh♤]

Nice guide

 

I think you should highlight that comparing backpacks via bp.tf's historical view is not entirely accurate, this is because bp.tf doesnt constantly scan backpacks every second so if a user makes multiple trades in a day it can be inaccurate and miss a few things. 

[Jacobmeister]

Nice guide

 

I think you should highlight that comparing backpacks via bp.tf's historical view is not entirely accurate, this is because bp.tf doesnt constantly scan backpacks every second so if a user makes multiple trades in a day it can be inaccurate and miss a few things. 

 

Thank you! That is a good point, too - I'll add that in

[Its Magic]

Just noting, at the user's steamrep page, you don't actually need the user ID. It provides a backpack.tf link for you: http://gyazo.com/05fc90ebb9dd212d4d605099d43d68ef