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Flipping Guide Sample


Julia Gillard the Honest

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Update: There's a new version at the bottom of this thread. I'm keeping this one here simply for records.

 

I'm trying to produce some kind of informative guide for flipping. My main goal for this is to then post it in Awesome's new loaning group as an example of how our loans can be used to begin successful trading. I don't usually write these guides so will very much so appreciate feedback and criticism, even if the whole thing has to be changed over time. I'm posting this here, obviously, for exposure. If you have any comments, please post away. This guide's target audience is people with a few keys of backpack wealth but who have a little bit of trading experience (enough to know to do a quick search on backpack.tf so as to not be sharked out of a few keys). That is, this is intended for people who we've deemed trustworthy enough to borrow our keys. The draft guide begins below the following line. I know how to flip and have one example from today but haven't done much more so please post examples if you have recently found a good flipping strategy. Please note that I still need to author a proper conclusion. For now it's just two sentences.

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Flipping items means buying them to then resell for profit. This is the standard buy-low-and-sell-high method that traders use to gain their wealth. You will likely want to do this with our loans. In practice, this sounds easy enough. However, this method is extremely tedious and often seems daunting to new traders. The reason for this is simple: New traders (such as new TF2 players) only have common items that drop for everyone. Those items are mostly unwanted. (Would you want to buy all of your weapons?) Weapons can be easily sold for scrap metal but that scrap metal itself isn't very valuable. Currently keys are currently worth over seven refined metal so you can imagine how long you would have to spend trading weapons just to get a single key. This is where we come in. We offer loans of items so that you can purchase and sell more valuable items.

 

Each sponsor will decide what items he or she will be willing to loan you but once you have accepted the loan, it is up to you to decide exactly what you will do with it. In particular, you must decide what items you would like to start dealing with. If you are loaned keys, you may wish to buy items with those keys or you may wish to sell the keys for metal and then buy items with that metal. Regarding what items are good for reselling, you must be willing to do some research yourself here. You may benefit from backpack.tf's list of recommended values here (it can certainly help to give you an idea about an item's value). However, backpack.tf lists past values. If you are looking at a recommended value on backpack.tf then you should also take a brief look at when the suggested value was made.

 

As an example, let's look at the Dogfighter. http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Dogfighter This is currently valued at about one and a half keys so you might be thinking that it'd be a good idea to try to buy it for one key and then sell it for more. However, if you looked into this particular item then you would realise that this wouldn't be a wise one to flip. First of all, it's still new and readily available in a crate (Crate #79). Therefore it is becoming more and more common with time. If you look at its past values then you can see this trend quite clearly. http://backpack.tf/stats/Unique/Dogfighter/Tradable/Craftable Its value is dropping and the current suggested value is a few weeks old. Thus it would be a very risky item to try to flip for profit. You should only flip new items if you can buy them extremely cheap and sell them very quickly as well.

 

At this stage, you might be thinking that you should only flip old items. This is certainly wise and successful for most traders. However, every trade has some small risk involved. As another example, let's look at the Team Captain. http://backpack.tf/stats/Unique/Team%20Captain/Tradable/Craftable Do you see that drop in July of 2012? The Team Captain is a popular hat which was once worth a couple of keys. What happened in July of 2012? Valve decided to have a sale and made the Team Captain cheaper to buy from the Mann Co. Shop. Those particular ones were uncraftable but them suddenly being cheaper (in terms of money) led to more people having their own (uncraftable) versions of this hat, which then led to the standard (craftable) Team Captain becoming less wanted. Therefore its value dropped. Every item is at risk of suffering a drop in value such as this. You will likely encounter some similar events in your trading career. The only thing that you can do to prevent a loss in value from it is keep flipping items, keep making profit and become so rich that you won't mind such problems. As for the Team Captain, it's still a popular hat which is mostly stable in value. You could certainly expect some rewards if you started buying these hats for, say, five refined and then selling each one for seven refined.

 

As another example, I'm going to tell you about two trades that I recently made. I posted this trade on Outpost to just sit and gather items. http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/17740287 I got a Vintage Hound Dog on the morning of authoring this guide. I paid one key for it. About two hours ago, I sold it for one key, one refined and one reclaimed metal. That's one refined metal plus one reclaimed that I got for free. This is exactly the sort of trading that you will be suited for with one of our loans. You couldn't expect to get that much metal in just a few hours by trading weapons alone. You need more capital to make such profit. Regarding the Vintage Hound Dog, it's gradually dropping in value (http://backpack.tf/stats/Vintage/Hound%20Dog/Tradable/Craftable) but it's safe to flip because it's old and limited; it isn't coming out of a crate right now. You may also note that I sold it quickly. If I held onto it for a few weeks or months then I'd risk it losing value if, say, Valve had a sale and made the (unique) Hound Dog cheaper in the Mann Co. Store.

 

Those are some examples of flipping. It's really up to you to decide what items you will buy and sell.

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more short sentences, less massive paragraphs. The average trader doesn't have the attention span to read a single sentence on a trades' notes, let alone an essay. 

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more short sentences, less massive paragraphs. The average trader doesn't have the attention span to read a single sentence on a trades' notes, let alone an essay.

So you would like to loan your keys to a trader who refuses to read?

 

If you're going to be loaning capital, you should be loaning it to someone who is likely to try to make a profit, not someone who hasn't passed the 2nd grade.

I do agree it could be shorter, but you should really think about this^.

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So you would like to loan your keys to a trader who refuses to read?

 

If you're going to be loaning capital, you should be loaning it to someone who is likely to try to make a profit, not someone who hasn't passed the 2nd grade.

I do agree it could be shorter, but you should really think about this^.

Well, even i didn't really want to read it at first; the only reason i did was because of its relevancy, and the fact that i like to see different view points because you never know what will be pointed out. But, when I made my first post i didn't read the whole thing, just bits and pieces.
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Well, even i didn't really want to read it at first; the only reason i did was because of its relevancy, and the fact that i like to see different view points because you never know what will be pointed out. But, when I made my first post i didn't read the whole thing, just bits and pieces.

Maybe you should have "basic reading skills" and "willingness to read" as requirements to applying for a sponsor. :P
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more short sentences, less massive paragraphs. The average trader doesn't have the attention span to read a single sentence on a trades' notes, let alone an essay. 

Let alone read at all.

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Probably I skipped the thread with the loan idea but what does the person that gets the loaned items gains with this?

 

I mean he is the one that spends his time tracking trades for profit.

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more short sentences, less massive paragraphs. The average trader doesn't have the attention span to read a single sentence on a trades' notes, let alone an essay. 

 

 

Separate it into subsections if possible of different aspects and certain pockets of information.

 

Definitely going to make such modifications as soon as I can. Looking back at it now, I agree that as a whole, it does look rather unwelcoming.

 

Probably I skipped the thread with the loan idea but what does the person that gets the loaned items gains with this?

 

I mean he is the one that spends his time tracking trades for profit.

 

There are going to be applicants who have never had more than a couple of keys at a time. For example, I will not sponsor anyone who's so new that he's likely to be sharked and lose a heap of keys for a single, craftable hat. This is just (hopefully) some tips to avoid such a thing happening. It may also be evidence in case if we get heaps of "I didn't scam you but I made some bad trades so can't pay you back anything." One of the worst things that can happen to us is every client suddenly claiming to have been sharked and trading all of our loans to scammer-tagged accounts. Some (few) scammers have dozens of old, idle accounts that they rig up to look legitimate (with a few hundred TF2 hours, profile pictures, friends and everything). Therefore it's in our interest to do our best to educate our clients about simple trading so that those events really do indicate a scam rather than misfortune.

 

Something else that nobody's mentioned: My example with the Vintage Hound Dog. Is it a bad example? I don't mind vintage hats because they don't fluctuate very much (just gradually dropping at the moment) but I know that many people have had great trouble with reselling them in the past. I'll also look through some other people's trades.

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Version 2:

For now, how's this one? I don't know Puddington/Puddinghead well so could someone please inform me if he's likely to not want his trades be used as examples? I can change those at any time but, for now, they're good sample examples.

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Becoming Rich With Loans

 

How can I use your loans to become rich?

 

Quite simply, you want to flip items. Flipping items means buying them to then resell for profit. You will want to do this with our loans. This is where we come in. We offer loans of items so that you can purchase and sell items that are more valuable than common weapons. Each sponsor will decide what items he or she will be willing to loan you but once you have accepted the loan, it is up to you to decide exactly what you will do with it. In particular, you must decide what items you would like to start dealing with. If you are loaned keys, you may wish to buy items with those keys or you may wish to sell the keys for metal and then buy items with that metal.

 

What items should I flip?

 

You must be willing to do some research yourself here. You may benefit from backpack.tf's list of recommended values here (it can certainly help to give you an idea about an item's value). However, you should note that backpack.tf lists past values. If you are looking at a recommended value on backpack.tf then you should also take a brief look at when the suggested value was made.

 

What things should I check when using backpack.tf?

 

You want to consider when an item was released, its current value and its general trend over time. Are you looking at an item that is becoming more valuable over time, is it remaining stable or is it dropping? If it's new then it won't have a large history of values so you will need to consider if it's still readily available (such as a new hat) or if it had a limited release (such as a festive weapon).

 

Examples

 

Example of a new, dropping item:

 

For this example, we will consider the Dogfighter. http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Dogfighter This is currently valued at about one and a half keys so you might be thinking that it'd be a good idea to try to buy it for one key and then sell it for more. However, if you looked into this particular item then you would realise that this wouldn't be a wise one to flip. First of all, it's still new and readily available in a crate (Crate #79). Therefore it is becoming more and more common with time. If you look at its past values then you can see this trend quite clearly. http://backpack.tf/stats/Unique/Dogfighter/Tradable/Craftable Its value is dropping and the current suggested value is a few weeks old. Thus it would be a very risky item to try to flip for profit. You should only flip new items if you can buy them extremely cheap and sell them very quickly as well.

 

Are old items the only safe ones to flip?

 

At this stage, you might be thinking that you should only flip old items. This is certainly wise and successful for most traders. However, every trade has some small risk involved. As another example, let's look at the craftable Team Captain. http://backpack.tf/stats/Unique/Team%20Captain/Tradable/Craftable Do you see that drop in July of 2012? The craftable Team Captain is a popular hat which was once worth a few keys. What happened in July of 2012? Valve decided to have a sale and made the uncraftable Team Captain cheaper to buy from the Mann Co. Shop. Those suddenly being cheaper (in terms of money) led to more people having their own (uncraftable) versions of this hat, which then led to the standard (craftable) Team Captain becoming less wanted. Therefore its value dropped.

 

Every item is at risk of suffering a drop in value such as the Team Captain experienced. You will likely encounter some similar events in your trading career. The only thing that you can do to prevent a significant loss in value from this is keep flipping items, keep making profit and become so rich that you won't mind such problems. Ideally you will keep flipping so won't have too much stock of whatever item crashes. Simply consider the phrase, "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." As for the Team Captain, it's still a popular hat which is mostly stable in value. You could certainly expect some rewards if you started buying these hats for, say, five refined and then selling each one for seven refined. The following screenshot shows a TC flip that made two refined and two reclaimed metal in just three hours. http://i.imgur.com/dNrHoz5.jpg

 

Example of an old, dropping item:

 

As another example, I'm going to tell you about two trades that I recently made. I posted this trade on Outpost to just sit and gather items. http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/17740287 I got a Vintage Hound Dog on the morning of authoring this guide. I paid one key for it. About two hours ago, I sold it for one key, one refined and one reclaimed metal. Similarly with the TC flip above, you couldn't expect to get that much metal in just a few hours by trading weapons alone. You need more capital to make such profit (which, again, is where we can help). Regarding the Vintage Hound Dog, it's gradually dropping in value (http://backpack.tf/stats/Vintage/Hound%20Dog/Tradable/Craftable) but it's safe to flip because it's old and limited; it isn't coming out of a crate right now. You may also note that I sold it quickly. If I held onto it for a few weeks or months then I'd risk it losing value if, say, Valve had a sale and made the (unique) Hound Dog cheaper in the Mann Co. Store.

 

In general, however, a lot of traders complain about vintage hats. Many people find them very difficult to sell. If you're going to flip them then you need to either buy them cheaply enough so that if you have to, you can still sell them below market value while making a profit; or be very, very patient (willing to wait months to sell). For example, if you find a vintage hat that's worth two keys but takes half a year to sell then you want to consider buying it for one key and reselling it for, say, one key plus one refined. By having the lowest price around, your one would sell the fastest. Even then, it's difficult to find someone who actually wants the blue border of a vintage item. To summarise this paragraph: Warning: Don't flip vintage items if you're impatient!

 

Example of a consistently-flippable item:

 

Many traders decide to flip TF2 paints. You might have noticed that paints are regularly on sale in the Mann Co. Store and you might be thinking that they shouldn't be very popular with buyers. However, in reality paint is regularly consumed and always in demand. During sales its value will drop but it usually then becomes more popular again. Here's an example. http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/14588706 Do you see how many people are willing to sell that trader cheap paints? Now look at one of his selling trades. http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/14464520 It is also very popular. Paints are very good candidates for item investments. Their regular sales make great times to stock up on them so that you can sell for significant profit a couple of months later.

 

Other Items

 

Are there any new, increasing items?

 

In short, no. New items are always unstable and will often sell for several times the value that they will eventually achieve.

 

Are there any old, increasing items?

 

Yes but you have to consider how such an item can exist. First, if it's increasing then it mustn't be readily available. It must be rare and difficult to acquire. Also, if it's old then it's likely that its buyers have already bought. The only items that satisfy these properties are already highly valuable. Such items include unusuals with the original effects and the original strange festive weapons. You will need a large amount of capital to begin flipping these.

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