Best budged efects?

[kajzer]

hello everyone! i am getting near unusual trading and i want to ask you to suggest some good-lookin' cheap unusual effect. 

[Slam]

This answer is based on the idea of you wanting to buy one to KEEP. Some of these effects may be very difficult to sell for a profit in the current market.

 

I personally believe that these are the BEST "cheap" effects that don't require you to wear a really ugly hat to have them:

-Cloud 9: A relatively nice and simple effect that matches a lot of loadouts well.
-Disco Beat Down: Widely considered the best of the Gen 3 effects due to how nice it looks.
-Blizzardy Storm: Looks really simple and nice, is very noticable, and matches so many winter-themed loadouts it's not even funny.
-Stormy Storm: Same as Blizzardy, but doesn't match sets quite as well.
-Purple Confetti: I honestly think it's easier to see and more simple/fun than a lot of lower tier effects.
-Haunted Ghosts: Used to be high-mid tier, and is quite nice albeit hard to notice in bright areas. Sadly, it's only cheap on some lower tier hats.
-Circling TF Logo: It's a yellow TF2 logo circling around your head... it's honestly pretty decent.

 

Note that if your "near unusual" means 10 keys or something low like that, you might have to settle for a lower-tier hat to get most of these effects.

 

I strongly suggest that if your budget allows for it, you decide what hat(s) you really, really love and then look for those effects on those hats before looking for other hats. Having a hat you genuinely like will make you like the unusual a lot more even if you have to settle for a lesser effect. Don't get a stupidly ugly hat just because the effect is nice, you'll end up wanting other unusuals really quickly. Use loadout.tf to find loadouts you genuinely like.

 

You can get a lot of the newer effects (post-Invasion) for pretty cheap too, but only for cheap on really ugly hats from recent cases. (I genuinely believe 80% of the hats that can be unusual from CASES are ugly as hell)

 

If you want to buy something that looks decent but can be traded later at a potential profit, you might want to avoid Cloud 9, DBD, and possibly Confetti. 3rd gen effects are hard to sell for any decent value right now due to the Crate Depression back in July, while Confetti is generally hard to sell due to people seeing it as a "hard to notice meh effect". (Although, C9 and DBD seem to be actually doing okay on higher tier hats.)

 

Edit: incase you meant unusual taunts for some reason, everything but the tornado effects look halfway decent, so just get one of those.

[Alecto]

Depending on what your budget is (pretty important bit of info) I'd suggest Power Surge + Electrostatic. If you're cool with any of the hats from Violet Vermin Case, you can get Ring of Fire/White Lightning/Vicious Circle for under 20 keys which imo is stupid cheap for such great effects, Clairvoyance is usually even cheaper. I see Highway Star and Vampire Vanquisher (and Tank Top but I know a lot of people genuinely don't like it lol) as very overlooked nice hats. Depends what classes you're most looking at getting an unusual for.
Other than that Mike made some good calls

[Uncle Dang]

The Halloween 2018 effects

 

The 2019 effects are too new for the market to be efficient, but the dust settled on a lot of the Violet Vermin case hats at being routinely bought and sold for a very low, stable price

[kajzer]

thank you all for advices!

[Slam]

2 hours ago, kajzer said:

thank you all for advices!

 

Edit: COMPLETELY forgot how awesome Vivid Plasma looks in general / with yellow-themed loadouts. Add that to your list for considerations. Steer clear of Searing Plasma however. The difference in visibility between Vivid and Searing is equal to the difference in visibility between Nebula and Nuts & Bolts.

 

Starstorm Insomnia and Starstorm Slumber are really nice looking effects too if you can find a halfway decent looking hat with them for cheap.