Crazy blog from 2013

[Relic]

So I started with wanting to know if you could get salvaged crates from pallet's or not, so I decided to google search and find out (I still don't know) and somehow on google I came across this:

 

https://one-crate-per-week.tumblr.com/

This was one hell of a rabbit hole I couldn't help but explore.

 

Title is a bit self explanatory, a guy unboxing a single crate every week until he unboxes an unusual (or dies), and during these 33 weeks he documented not only his unboxes, but also much of what he had saw in 2013 during trading and unboxing, and how he viewed the economy back then. 

 

What I really liked about this guys blog is that he explained how trading was back in 2013, which is significant for me because I joined in 2013, but didn't start trading until the end of 2014, right before *ahem* https://backpack.tf/suggestion/525ae8b44cd7b8dc7a8b456b I remember the crash very vividly and how people believed that not only trading in tf2, but also tf2 as a whole was dead, and that csgo's economy was where everyone was going to, with the belief that CS's skins were going to be the next be thing (which they undoubtedly were..) Also, if anyone knows what this was: http://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/topic/4347-a-cooldown-rule-is-in-effect-for-earbuds-until-further-notice/ I'd like to know what the rule was, since I can't really remember. Something with the pace of price suggestions for buds to be accepted iirc.

 

However, I didn't know much about trading culture or what things were like prior to the crash, for instance; in blog #18 he goes on to state the following: "consider that the suggestion which brought the price of refined from 0.35 to 0.33-0.35 potentially shed the neighborhood of 1.5 million USD from the TF2 economy"

 

Also linking that the TF2 economy had a potential 50 million dollar valuation: http://web.archive.org/web/20120707072336/http://theonlinesociety.com/2011/12/the-50-million-virtual-millinery/ (later stated this could have more realistically been only half at the time, but headlines gotta headlines, yo.) This made me wonder just exactly how big tf2 trading was in comparison to today, and how much the overall tf2 economy is now, nearly a decade later, which BTW, if anyone knows what happened to THIS: http://tf2finance.com/ , lmk. I'd like to think this was around the peak of tf2's popularity when it came to trading, before the inevitable earbuds crash and hyperinflation of ref in 2015.

 

He also talks about the probabilities of unboxing, or how to "unbox smarter" by mitigating your risk, by using a wild variety of different formulas, and spreadsheets; http://tf2crates.blogspot.com/p/crate-unboxing-spreadsheet.html; and https://www.trade.tf/crates,  which I'm not sure has much practicality to them but I found them really interesting nonetheless.  

 

He also goes goes in-depth on the concepts of the psychology of trading, gambling, denial, etc. which I found pretty entertaining and interesting given a lot of the examples he provided, such as this 15 Y/O kid who made $10k off of trading in 10 months: http://web.archive.org/web/20110925024149/http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/kmzuq/ive_made_10000_usd_selling_hats_ama 

 

Really did not intend to spend as much time on this as I did but oh well. I really enjoy learning about stuff like this when it comes to tf2's history, like historic events such as huge spycrabs, or the origin of crazy expensive rare items. I'd definitely recommend skimming through it, there is a lot but in it but if you're a nerd for this kind of thing like me, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

 

 

[Slam]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

in blog #18 he goes on to state the following: "consider that the suggestion which brought the price of refined from 0.35 to 0.33-0.35 potentially shed the neighborhood of 1.5 million USD from the TF2 economy"

 

Not an expert or anything but bp.tf says only 8.5 million refined metal exists, and the furthest back the graph goes (2018) is 5 million exists. For a 1 cent price drop that'd shed only 50,000 USD from the TF2 economy, unless they're including the valve of everything valued at under 1 key.

[neonfishingrod]

sweet nostalgia trip. thanks for posting this

[Brown]

Tf2's cultural history definitely deserves more thorough archiving, I'm glad I could read through this post. Players today just wont get to experience the magic of a fresh new update with new features to research and strategize over. The mystery of not knowing literally everything about a new update by the time it comes out. I wont know what the first scream fortress was like for the average player. I've only ever known scream fortress as Google has presented it to me, the event with achievements you can cheese to get free hats, with lore and old exclusive features another 10 layers deep. Tf2 has such a rich history, I like to imagine some dramatic youtube retelling being what drives people to the game in 7 years after it's died, or something.

[Relic]

7 hours ago, mikey boi said:

 

Not an expert or anything but bp.tf says only 8.5 million refined metal exists, and the furthest back the graph goes (2018) is 5 million exists. For a 1 cent price drop that'd shed only 50,000 USD from the TF2 economy, unless they're including the valve of everything valued at under 1 key.

iirc he was talking about the value of everything, in the sense of RL$, meaning if everything is worth X refined (no matter if 1 key or 1000), and the RL$ value of ref goes down, then the entire economy as a whole would shed that 1.5 million figure, ASSUMING the 50 mill evaluation of the entire economy as a whole was worth that much (good chance it was like half or two thirds) and assuming everything would be evaluated by the $ amount of ref. (which never was obv)

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

Imagine thinking the ref->key value has any meaning outside of craft hat prices ecks dee.

[Melusine]

Thanks for the nostalgia. It's weird thinking back on how much the community has changed over the years. -And how only a fraction of today's playerbase knows about what was commonplace 5 or 10 years ago.

The days of Maela being praised as the best player in the world, Geel (presumably) paying traders to talk about his new site called scrap,tf.

The weekly reports of stupid Magistrate's Mullet-Party Phantom spies losing their entire backpacks in spycrabbing duels and subsequently disappearing from the internet.

The initial release of the community market; how it ended buds and bills as currency, hearing traders and item pricers laughing and raging at tales of non-traders buying and selling expensive effects for cheap.

TF2Outpost being the center of all trade, and trade_plaza still mainly being a place to trade, compared to the jungle-gyms that most trade servers are today.

 

The idea of trading a Genuine Shred alert + Brütal Bouffant for a High Five, an all-father, a strange soda popper and two scrap is almost unimaginable today.

Nearly all trades done today are in full pure or full unusual overpay, because lesser quality hats and items are no longer desired in the same way. 

 

Somberness is what I feel. A community slowly expanding from a tightknit group to a scattered international online marketplace, complete with trade bots for everything.

I miss how easy it was to turn a profit, how easy it was to make friends, how innocent of a time it was. I can only find solace in the fact that deep down, I know it really wasn't as nice as I remembered it to be. 

Middle-aged men screaming at me to "get the f**k out of the server, you squeaker f****t little q***r", hordes of scammers & sharks lurking around every corner, a regular pair of unique all-stars being worth several keys.