Is Tf2 Trading Dead?

[♡❤Duckling❤♡]

Exactly what the title says

[funkle]

yes, very 

[大 FPR]

Its not dead per se but its very hard to gain profit anymore - unless you are a big trader (hoarding unusuals) or invest a lot of money. Or, of course get lucky with your crates.

 

As for the less valuable items its fine as ever.

[Knight]

With the upcoming steam summer sale, influxes of sellers came in and listed their items, while either demand has diminished or stayed the same; I really don't know which. 

 

It'll all go back to a normal pace before long, I'm sure

[Chilled Soda]

I play the game, when I have a goal item of what I want I trade to get that, don't really care about anything else.

 

 

"Dead" is relative to the person, for me (I can get my item within 3 days of getting the money required) its not dead at all.

[NotWarlizard]

It's not really dead, the problem is valve keeps adding items and the player base stays the same, therefore it creates an image that people are not interesting in items.

[Vrakos Anthrakir]

no, it's not dead.  why would you think it's dead?

[WANTED!]

Its not at all dead...

[John Yakuza]

I still have faith in humanity TF2 economy

[Pearly Gates]

I wrote something on my steam profile about kinda that question:

My opinion about TF2 Trading after 3+ years
Tf2 Trading sucks. Why?
It all starts with 'small item trading'. Back when Keys were still 2.66 and everything it was nice, because you were able to make actual profit. Find someone who is willing to take some stranges for his hat, get two hats this way and there you go - you've got an key!
Nowadays it's different. Maybe you can still find someone who still sells you his/her hat for cheap (I'm talking about unique hats), but a key does not equal 2 hats nowadays. More like 12 hats or something. The problem is: In the small item trading scene you won't make profit anymore. Not only because of what I just mentioned, but also because of trading bots btw. They are faster than you, so they get the cheap stuff and sell their stuff for pure faster.
The same goes for big trading, I'm talking about unusuals and stuff. Let's say you've got 25 keys. Go and buy a 'quicksale' with it (a 30 key hat, if you're lucky). If you're lucky, you'll sell it within a month. But only if you're lucky. And that'll be 5 keys profit a month, which is a 9,25$ wage. (Get any job and you'll make this money in an hour). There's no real profit. Another thing are 'big' traders - most people know them. Most of them (not all of them!!) are just assholes, thinking that a 2,000$ backpack makes them better in any way.
To sum this up: There's no profit anymore. I'd call it 'swapping' more than trading, because getting big ( =rich ) with tf2 trading is almost impossible.
What did Pearly do?
Pearly (yep, that's me) cashed in with PayPal. He said ''fuck it. Why should I trade for like 6 months, hand around on stupid nooby trade servers and stuff just to get some shitty nuts'n Bolts Bonk Boy? I'll buy the Sunbeams one with cash.''
It's less haggle, and I can buy items I like. Unlike any other Items I've had (which I never bought with PayPal, I 'traded' them) they are not put up for sale; I don't want to sell them - because I enjoy them! And that's the problem about trading - you gotta be lucky to get the Items you want.
And that's the nice thing about having money. Buy whatever you want, and have fun with it.

[Wokath]

The problem is there are way more sellers then buyers.

[MrDeepDarkmind]

well back then the trading was good

now these days its like shit since ALL CLASS UPDATES BOYS. LETS SELL FOR 4x the price

but the trading isnt dead

its just underrated

Popular Trading are like MMO games or CSGO,Dota 2 far as i know 

[funkle]

With the upcoming steam summer sale, influxes of sellers came in and listed their items, while either demand has diminished or stayed the same; I really don't know which. 

 

It'll all go back to a normal pace before long, I'm sure

People have been saying this for the past year and these sales have done nothing to help. It can, on a very rare chance, temporarily decrease key prices. Kids buy keys (and now wait a week) and sell them in mass quantities for lower prices. Again, if we're lucky we see key prices of like 15 again. It's not something to count on anymore.

 

The problem is there are way more sellers then buyers.

Very general but about right. The reason is probably because no one has the currency to buy into real profit trading anymore. And real profit is usually seen once you hit 200+ keys I'd say. Anything under and you're making under $10 in profit per trade if I had to guess. Hardly worth the time. 

 

Pearly nailed it, really. Back when you only had to make a few sales to make a key profit to start was when trading was hot. Now it seems like you need to trade for a month to make even a key. "Trading" in general is still in highish volume because people obviously want items, which is where I can see why Pearly called it "swapping". The place where the economy seems to have slowed is unusuals and australiums. I wish there was a graph showing the volume of unusuals per price bracket and volume of australiums sold. If I had to guess, any volume of unusual trading of value above 50 has dropped significantly in the past year. And during this drop, I'd bet Australium volume skyrocketed at some point and then plummeted back to below average. These two key elements of the economy have become stagnant, really, which has killed off a lot of the economy in general. There's no motivation for profit anymore because it's so unobtainable in reasonable time and the prices of so many items have exceeded the amount any present-day trader would pay for them.

Also, I'd like to bring banned users into the equation. If I had to guess (again), probably 15% of total valuable items are stuck in banned user's backpacks. These are the users who would be competing with other high tier traders on prices, but are instead banned for life for "trading with an alt" (which is absolutely senseless in my opinion) or some other shit like "sharking". I understand people here have a mindless hatred for "scammers" or people who have traded with them, but putting a lifetime ban on these valuable items is really damaging the economy. At least make an out for these people so we can put these items back into circulation. Stop banning for paypal sales or something, they could always post these items on the SCM anyway. 

 

I know this is very open for criticism because all of this is based on guesses and assumptions. But let's be real, the economy is garbage these days. And until TF3 or something, it's going to stay that way. Far beyond repair. 

[Jackk]

I wouldn't say it's dead, but it's certainly not as active as it used to be. It feels like everyone migrated to CSGO for some reason.

[Pearly Gates]

Yeah, CSGO is a reason why tf2 trading slowed down. Many of the people I have in my friend list from when I was still trading have moved to CSGO. 

Just take a look at SCM: 'Back then' keys and some other tf2 stuff were the most popular items. Now there's only CSGO stuff at most popular. And that's a pretty good metaphor - I think - for the whole thing.

 

But whatever, I like playing Tf2 and as long as I can still sell my stuff again at some point when I wanna cash out I'm happy

[3.50]

My opinion about TF2 Trading after 3+ years

Tf2 Trading sucks. *cries a river*

You just ain't doin' it right.

 

I "cashed in" with USD $5.

 

I traded for a while, got bored left for a while, came back, etc.

 

With a value of several hundred times what I started with, I can safely say that even if all you're worried about is profit, you can do just fine if you pay attention and stay willing to learn.

 

If you know what you're doing, you can make 20%+ profit per day at any size investment. It takes a bit of time, but it always has. As someone who's been around the trading scene for years, I can tell you this: it's easier now than ever before to profit, if you know what you're doing--especially at low values.

[Pearly Gates]

You just ain't doin' it right.

 

I "cashed in" with USD $5.

 

I traded for a while, got bored left for a while, came back, etc.

 

With a value of several hundred times what I started with, I can safely say that even if all you're worried about is profit, you can do just fine if you pay attention and stay willing to learn.

 

If you know what you're doing, you can make 20%+ profit per day at any size investment. It takes a bit of time, but it always has. As someone who's been around the trading scene for years, I can tell you this: it's easier now than ever before to profit, if you know what you're doing--especially at low values.

I've been trading a lot as well, and I was trading once, stopped, came back and made it from 250 to 1800$ (and spent around 200-300$ in general). 

 

The problem with 'profit' is, that it's not worth the time. If you go to your neighbours and mow the lawn for 5 bucks your profit is like 500-1000% higher than the profit you would have made when trading in the same time.

And let's take a look at your backpack - yeah, its 1,8k$. But the only actually 'nice' Items you have - oh wait, except some firstgen effects on more or less cancerous hats (which seem very hard to sell? idk) there's nothing 'nice'. Yes, you could buy 'nice' stuff with the pure and those paints, but you might get my point - this is no insult, okay?

With trading, it's hard and annoying getting the stuff you want. And it's even harder to keep it then, not trying hard to make a bit of profit with it. And that's one thing i'm saying in that text above which you just broke down to *cries a river*, because you're such a pro. The other thing is the profit thing and that it's not worth the time, see my 'lawn mowing'-example up there.

 

I was doing it right. I made profit. But nowadays - from what I can tell, I don't trade too much anymore - it's not worth it.

[AFFIRMATIVE]

The problem with 'profit' is, that it's not worth the time. If you go to your neighbours and mow the lawn for 5 bucks your profit is like 500-1000% higher than the profit you would have made when trading in the same time.

 

The mistake is when you actually want to make tf2 profit over an actual job, that will obviously not be worth it most of the time.

 

Most people don't take trading as a job, they want to make profit on their free time as a hobby alongside what job they have, if they have one. For bringing the lawn mowing example, you assume that Frisky made his backpack with time spent in trading instead of actually working, which you don't know that unless you know him. He could've made his money because he enjoyed the experience of trading on his free time and the effort wasn't as big to deem it as an obligatory choir for him to make cash to the point where it would equate to actual labor.

 

Maybe some methods of trading aren't as viable as they were in the past, and you must adapt to new methods if you actually want to make some money, or maybe you just aren't in the mood anymore to start re-learning to make profit with the current trading scene.

 

But either way there are many degrees of effort you can do in order to make profit, and you don't need to sacrifice your job time to do that.

[OverduePixels]

Is Tf2 Trading dead? No, its not. We can only call it dead when you see hoards of panic sellers trying desperately to sell their items.

 

Did Tf2 Trading slowed down in the last 2 years? Definitely yes, a lot of top tier trader either got Marked by SR, banned, Vac banned or moved on to another game / life.

 

Tf2 trading isn't blossoming as it was in the last 2 years. Its not easy to trade in the top/god tier. At the moment, there isn't much top/god tier regular trader left.

 

As for low tier items...You can actually trade in low tier unusual or items, but I would have to say the demand for items are not as incredibly high as it once was, however the low tier trading is still busy and people are continuously trading in this scenario.

[funkle]

Is Tf2 Trading dead? No, its not. We can only call it dead when you see hoards of panic sellers trying desperately to sell their items.

Panic sellers dont have to be a sign for a stagnant economy. It's the fact that any of those sellers who sell valuable items are now selling to such a niche market of buyers that it's excluding the majority of the other potential buyers. Low tier trading has been pushed back from cheap unusuals to now basic stranges and hats. Middle tier trading use to be trading Max's heads for 50 keys or whatever it was, compared to what it is now of selling unusuals of probably less than 20 keys. 

 

Most people don't take trading as a job, they want to make profit on their free time as a hobby alongside what job they have, if they have one. 

Pretty much what Ive done. I use to be able to pay for gas with TF2 trading and skip a day at work. But now that it's so difficult to trade, I've cashed out totally, picked up more shifts at work, and pushed trading to the backburner with the off-chance I get lucky. I know I made the right choice too because it's working out much, much better than the system I use to have. 

 

With a value of several hundred times what I started with, I can safely say that even if all you're worried about is profit, you can do just fine if you pay attention and stay willing to learn.

 

If you know what you're doing, you can make 20%+ profit per day at any size investment. It takes a bit of time, but it always has. As someone who's been around the trading scene for years, I can tell you this: it's easier now than ever before to profit, if you know what you're doing--especially at low values.

There's nothing to know anymore. You set up a rinse and repeat system for making reclaimed - refined metal profit at a time. You dont have to take into account the refined prices anymore, theyve been at 10-12 cents a pop for as long as I can remember now. Keys are pushed to capacity where they always max out at about 20-21 ref and then drop for a bit to maybe 17. They always build back up to 20 though. Buds havent been anywhere above even 4 keys since last year I think where they hit 7 for a maybe a few hours. In other words, there's no outside factors to take into account that can make or break a trade these days. It is all a system where currency prices are irrelevant and you bank off quicksellers to sell to you for anything lower than the average buyout price of anyone else. The 2nd part of that last statement is a good business model I guess, but when there's literally nothing else to it it is just item exchanging at that point. Not a real, functioning economy.