What a welcome back I've had

[undervoid]

I decided I'd get back into TF2 trading, and I was loving it. I put in around $100 approximately in keys and bought unusuals and traded them up. It was all going so well - I practically doubled my money and wearing the unusuals in the game made me feel so superior; all those other peasants with their ghostly gibuses looked up to me and I looked down and glared at them. But then it all went downhill. All thanks to backpack, more like backstab. They reduced keys, all my backpack fell a tonne, they reduced buds, all my backpack fell a tonne, then they reduced my 50 key unusual I'd just got not a week ago and made it 30 keys. Now I'm down about $116 and I've just had it up to here.

 

Thanks for welcoming me back to TF2, backpack.tf.

 

I feel that these days nobody wants to trade anymore. When I started a few years ago I was too poor to do any real trading but it felt like the golden age of it all. I saw people constantly trading around hats and everyone won from the trades. Now when I try and sell my unusuals I feel like everyone will only pay 60% or less of it's worth, they only accept "pure" for payment and nobody really wants to trade it for the hats, it's all about the money. Yeah sure I'm in this for the money but mostly for the fun of it all, I wanted to trade myself up and up and get myself a burning Ushanka, but now my dream has faded - I don't think I'll ever even try. Does anyone else feel this way? People stick to backpack.tf so much now it's impossible to trade without using it as a guide seeing as everyone else does. Their system is faulty and they are ruining the trading game.

 

Where did the TF2 I knew and loved go to?

 

 

------------

 

 

Sorry if you disagree but I needed to vent this out.

[Balcherite]

not backpack.tf's fault that the community decides to sell stuff for less

[frank mcdank]

[Senpai Absol~]

I disagree lol

I've been only trading for about 14 months

Havent put any money into tf2, and i'm at about a 1k BP

And this isn't Backpack.tf's fault, they just reflect the eco, then people panic because keys are dropping and such, but they will raise, keys will only be down for now, they dropped because of new update hype

[CourtneyWendysCommercials]

Your backpack isn't that impressive, so of course a few price changes are going to impact the value a lot.

 

 

And don't blame the suggesters, they just report to the website what things are currently selling for.

[TurboNEET]

Sooo in other words: You're just madetti that your smoking glasgow helm got dropped to a reasonable price?

[Дебра]

You are making the same mistake 99% of newbies make, you should not take the numbers backpack.tf puts on items as their set price. Do your own research on the value of a item.

Also people only pay 60% of the 'value' of a item because it's only worth 60% of the 3 year old backpack.tf price.

Also people want pure because nobody wants some random unusual that looks like trash for their item that they like.

[puddingkip]

Your backpack isn't that impressive, so of course a few price changes are going to impact the value a lot.

 

This makes no sense whatsoever. He is talking about currencies changing in value which in turn affects the items priced in those currencies which indirectly all is refined.

 

A 10% drop in refined prices make every item go down by 10% so on marginal rates it makes no matter. But a $200 backpack loses twenty dollar, a $2000 one loses 200. The more value something has the more currency changes will affect it.

 

And I used refined as example but by proxy this also works for keys and buds in the past

[polar]

Would you just go into the stock market and expect to succeed without knowledge of the market and circumstance? You can't expect to trade for profit without understanding / being attentive to market forces. I don't recommend starting with high tier trading.

[zirune]

then they reduced my 50 key unusual I'd just got not a week ago and made it 30 keys..

 

You thought you were going to sell a Smoking Glasgow Great Helm for 45 keys? That's the same as Circling Heart is priced at. The previous price on it was 2 years old.

 

That should the catalyst for your lesson on how to use backpack.tf properly and learn about the true value of items. Backpack.tf is not a bible, and not something you should take as true on faith. If a price is old, it's probably wrong. If something is priced unreasonably high compared to similarly rare/effect-quality items, the price is probably too high. With experience, you'll learn that a two-year-old price on a Smoking hat that's above Circling Heart is almost guaranteed to be way too high. In fact, the current price on it of 30 is probably still too high, and was dropped to only 30 (and not lower) because the old price inflated peoples' expectations on the hat and made them pay more than they should.

 

They reduced keys, all my backpack fell a tonne, they reduced buds, all my backpack fell a tonne

 

Keys lowering has literally no impact on the value of your items (except the ones priced in refined... those may go up or down), only on what backpack says they're worth. Keys are still ~$1.85-$1.90 in real-world money. That number with the dollar sign on your backpack on backpack.tf is literally meaningless. It changes on a whim, unrelated to what things are actually worth, due to it being divorced from actual key prices (which most items are in turn based on).

 

Looks like you got those buds on the 9th or 10th? Time for your second lesson: Don't invest in things that have already risen. If you're late on the bandwagon, you're most likely better off not getting on it at all. With experience, you'd know that buds weren't going to keep rising; they have already been abandoned and most people won't accept them as currency. The exact same thing happened in April, and ended in the same fashion; buds tanked almost as quickly as they rose.

 

I feel that these days nobody wants to trade anymore. When I started a few years ago I was too poor to do any real trading but it felt like the golden age of it all. I saw people constantly trading around hats and everyone won from the trades. Now when I try and sell my unusuals I feel like everyone will only pay 60% or less of it's worth, they only accept "pure" for payment and nobody really wants to trade it for the hats, it's all about the money. Yeah sure I'm in this for the money but mostly for the fun of it all, I wanted to trade myself up and up and get myself a burning Ushanka, but now my dream has faded - I don't think I'll ever even try. Does anyone else feel this way? People stick to backpack.tf so much now it's impossible to trade without using it as a guide seeing as everyone else does. Their system is faulty and they are ruining the trading game.

 

In the past week, I've traded 5 unusuals for significant (10%+) overpay in items, and another 6 for my B/O in pure (except for one, which was 1 key short of my B/O, but w/e). Just like in everything else, you have to use the tools at hand to your advantage, and backpack.tf is nothing more than a tool. I'll give you an example.

 

I bought an Aces High Das Guttenkutteharen off the SCM for about 10 keys' worth of wallet. It's currently priced at 25 keys. What do I sell it for?

 

17 keys. That gets me a solid profit on my investment. It's significantly less than other sellers were selling for, so I'm guaranteed to get attention before them from potential buyers. It's also ~30% off backpack.tf's price on it, which makes it look kind of like a quicksell, possibly even attracting the attention of resellers.

 

It took about 2 weeks, but I eventually sold it for 17 keys. And guess what? The person I sold it to didn't buy it to keep it... He's now trying to sell it for 20 keys. If I had tried to sell it for even close to 25 keys, he wouldn't have bought it, and I'd probably still be trying to sell it.

 

Will the new owner be able to sell it for 20 keys? Possibly, but it'll likely take him quite a while to do it. I had a larger potential market (resellers + people who actually want the hat) and a lower price, and it still took me 2 weeks.

 

In the case of your Smoking Glasgow Great Helm, you might have been able to use the old backpack.tf price to your advantage similarly if you had priced more aggressively. There's a significant chance you'd have had interest if you tried to sell it for around 30 keys instead of 45 when it was priced at ~47-61. Now... well, 30's probably out the window as well, and you'll have to go lower than that if you want to sell it. If you were using the information backpack.tf had (the 2 year old inflated price) plus looked at other sellers to see what they paid or were trying to sell for, you probably would spent have at most 30 keys' worth on it. But I have a feeling you ended up paying more, and are now trying to get back what you paid... Don't try that. You'll hold on to it forever, and end up selling it for even less than the ~23-25 you could probably get right now with relative ease.

 

Inflated backpack.tf prices are a huge trap for the unknowing, but can be used to your advantage if you're aware of them and are aggressive in your pricing. Look at the prices it has, and then assume that the most you'll be able to sell an unusual for is 10% below the low-end value, and you'll have a lot more reasonable expectations. Backpack.tf isn't ruining trading any more than people who insist that 3rd gens are cancer.

[Mrs TS]

Backpack.tf is a GUIDE. No one says you have to buy or sell at the listed prices. Sure alot of people go by it but, you can definitely sell for more than listed prices, or buy for cheaper then whats showing. You just need a lot of patience.

[Gren]

 

I feel that these days nobody wants to trade anymore. When I started a few years ago I was too poor to do any real trading but it felt like the golden age of it all. I saw people constantly trading around hats and everyone won from the trades. Now when I try and sell my unusuals I feel like everyone will only pay 60% or less of it's worth, they only accept "pure" for payment and nobody really wants to trade it for the hats, it's all about the money. Yeah sure I'm in this for the money but mostly for the fun of it all, I wanted to trade myself up and up and get myself a burning Ushanka, but now my dream has faded - I don't think I'll ever even try. Does anyone else feel this way? People stick to backpack.tf so much now it's impossible to trade without using it as a guide seeing as everyone else does. Their system is faulty and they are ruining the trading game.

 

Where did the TF2 I knew and loved go to?

 

I'm not going to comment on the path of your trading...pointless anyway unless you gave us some real details.  

 

But that paragraph....you do realize that you're part of the same problem you lament, right?  Unusual trading now more than ever is almost entirely profit driven.  People don't buy hats because they want to wear them in game, they buy them to make profit.  This was always true to a certain extent, but this mentality has now almost completely taken over.  This is exactly why you entered unusual trading:  for profit.  Don't be surprised that 95% of unusual traders are doing the exact same thing.  You don't want to pay full price in pure for a hat and neither do your counterparts.  You don't want to have to overpay and lose a bit of backpack value and neither do they.  You're all playing the same game....

 

Unusual trading is profit driven, not game driven, whereas lower tier trading (especially taunts and miscs.) is still game driven, meaning people buy these items so they can use them in-game.  That's the problem you're seeing and everyone out there trading hats for profit (so basically all of us) is part of the problem.