Should I Start Trading Unusuals?

[Urist]

My Life Story

Around 6 months ago I was gifted a key by a stranger (my most sincere gratitude to you wherever you are). I started trading unique hats and stranges and made a few ref. Then I discovered weapon skins. I had great success trading those and my backpack is now worth almost $30. I am expecting to soon have about 10 keys pure in my backpack if I am able to sell a few of my items, and I was wondering if I should try to get into unusual trading.

My Questions

Do you guys have any advice? 

Should I wait until I have more pure?

Any tips on starting out?

Is there even profit to be made in unusual?

Maybe I should stick with skins?

What about unusual weapons or taunts?

[Nikspy]

What I would recommend is that you go on scrap.tf and look for some unusual quicksells. You can get some decent stuff with 10 keys. Skins don't let you gain much profit while if you know what you're doing unusuals can treat you well. For unusual weapons and taunts... Nowhere near as good as unusual hats. Difficult to sell/have priced. But I strongly recommend that you go onto scrapprehensive for low tier unusual trading. You can make your way up easily with the right guidance!

Happy trading!

[Flamadin]

Anything can make you profit if you know the ins and outs well enough.

 

Unless you have a real good idea of what hats and effects are in demand, I could see you getting stuck with a hat that is tough to move.

 

If I was you I would just move up a level to skins that are more valuable, as you  seem to have a base knowledge at that.

 

I make most of my profit in parts and spells, and just buy unusuals to have fun with.

[leftyy]

I highly recommend you look up some common tf2 scam methods so you don't get cucked like the other idiot who made a post about him being scammed earlier

[Brown]

There's plenty of profit to be made off of unusual taunts imo, I just wouldn't buy any unless they were guaranteed profit. I'd always find deals snooping around afk farm servers, seeing who was quickselling, and sometimes, more often than not, i'd get a taunt or lowtier hat for cheaper than buyers. Some low tier traders will buy unusuals for the novelty, even if its a taunt, so finding someone whos willing to pay full price isn't that hard. So hanging around in afk servers in general might net you some good deals. Otherwise I'd stick to whatever you're doing with skins, it seems to be working

[Argylekicks]

just trade higher tier skins bc the trading bots made low tier unu trading kinda cancer tbh, i think around 30~ keys you should be alright to dip into unus bc you’ll have some capital. don’t put all your eggs in one basket

[ApothicЯ]

Better find a decent job instead because you won't feed your family when earning $30 within 6 months

 

Joke aside, as said by other people above, it's risky to get into low-tier unusual trading, especially with the crate bug depression which occured in July : lots of low-tier unusuals overflowing the market. You'll be tempted to get unusuals showing a great -50% discount, but you'll loose your money because some of them are either outdated/gambling hats/have seen their number in circulation double, so nobody will want them until you're making a -60% discount on them.

Unusuals' business is almost only profitable for people trading Miscs and Old Halloween effects, which isn't in your budget.

 

Investing all your money in a single business is very risky so don't do it, better diversify your investments into some small niches where bots [insert insult here] can't beat a human mind :  like skins for example (forget about the Unique hats trading now).

 

Personnaly, I've cashed out ~$600 per month for the last 3 years, by NOT getting involved in Unusuals, but essentially with tons of micro-transactions !

[Urist]

What I've gathered is I should wait till I have more pure. Is that right?

[Budgie]

30 minutes ago, Urist said:

What I've gathered is I should wait till I have more pure. Is that right?

The more you start with, the easier it is to make profit.

[Norah]

While you CAN make profit with 10 keys, I'd really advise you bulk it up a bit more. I myself generally advise people start out with 25 keys, but you can make it work with less. There's a lot of competition with Unusual hats, and if trading skins is working for you, I'd stick with it. I don't know your trading methods, but from my own experience your best bet for selling skins and Unusual weapons quickly is with Marketplace, since it's easier to search for them and you can often snag stuff for below BP.TF buyers, since most MP quickbuyers don't really spread themselves thin with the type of things they go for and decent deals can stay up for a good chunk of time. I mean, I should know, I take advantage of that fact all the time.

 

Also, taunts aren't worthless, but there's just so many the market on different taunts can change daily. I wouldn't recommend it right now, but when you've built up your backpack a fair bit, no harm in dipping into it.