I'm stuck and I don't know if its worth it to continue

[Lycanthropunk]

It's been a few years since I tried trading, and I remember getting stuck at a point I did not know how to get myself out of.

 

I've got a FN Woodland Warrior MKII Sniper Rifle that I could not get rid of. I remember trying to sell it but I had no luck. I checked the price listings and I found nothing.

 

I see the Steam market value that reads 36.64 ref, but I don't know how true this is. I see a buy order for 18 ref, but I don't know if it's the best idea to do that.

 

I'm still quite new to trading and I'm not sure if its even worth trying to continue from the spot I'm in. I got 4 keys and 7.44 ref, though I don't think that is enough to do much.

Some advice would be much appreciated. I really want to know where I should go from here, if that's even possible. I just don't want to make a mistake that would ruin trading for me for good. Thank you.

 

Edit: Aye, I just checked my trade history and it said I traded it for a key. Terrible.

[SubZeroDestruction]

Skins aren't really worth trading in unless you somehow have access to nearly every skin, and access to nearly everyone who wants X skin.
Too many variations, too many different values, too much uncertainty (unless you're trading high-key skins (Strange/Unusual) which even then isn't always the easiest).

I'd suggest trying to sell it for more than you paid for, and then just avoid skins in general.
GL

 

[TripleMasterA]

Sell it for 18 ref, take the loss and move on and avoid skins in the future. Whether  you want to continue trading is up to you

[Slam]

Just sell it for whatever you can get and take the loss. You're never going to have a 100% success rate on risks you take in trading in any community.

 

Really what you can do in your position is buy and sell painted cosmetics for a profit, specifically focus on black/white/lime/pink/TS painted items. A lot of people are able to flip those hats for a few ref profit each relatively consistently, and the demand for them will always exist since it's always better to just buy a painted hat than to buy the hat and then an unapplied paint.

 

Alternatively, you can try your hand at buying and selling non-skin stranges with good strange parts (damage dealt, doms, headshots for sniper, etc), it's slower than painted cosmetics, but a lot of people are willing to pay a fair amount extra for stranges with good parts.

 

One other method of trading before you can afford to do unusual trading is buying and selling spelled items, 4 keys is enough to pick up some lower/mid tier hats with paint spells. This, however, is a lot slower and often times riskier than either of the two methods above, as the market for spells is much smaller (and will continue to shrink the more outrageous the prices for spelled items get).

 

Trading at the low-end has become more difficult than ever due to all the bots and the horrible ref-to-key rates that we've had for the past few years, and if you can't invest the money to get straight into unusual trading, then you're left with just a few relatively slow methods of trading up that bots either can't work with at all or very rarely work with.