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[GUIDE] How to make an Unusual Price Suggestion [2021 edition]


ajdislikesyournamingpolicy

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Hullo, good day to you all. I still go by aj. I've been "hyping" this up for a while now and just been snowed in with a bunch of work and other stuff including getting stuff ready for uni but I think I may as well strike while the iron is hot and get this pumped out.

 

Disclaimer: The following is merely a summation of how I make an unusual price suggestion, this isn't the only way and it's probably not the best way. It's what works best for me and it works as efficiently as I want it to be. There's plenty of other inspiration to draw from if you wish to learn and improve your own style of making suggestions further.

 

For starters:

I've noticed that on forums, there really isn't an up-to-date guide that shows how to actually make an unusual price suggestion. Here are a few example that are related to suggestions, I do encourage you to read through them but also, block of text = I can't read. Do not fret, I also plan on livestreaming myself making an unusual price suggestion and going through all the relevant steps in the Unusual Suggestions Reward Program discord (Link is here: https://discord.gg/EphDURbAXT - thank you Cave) [The date for this will be decided at a later time via the poll]

 

https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/792-how-to-make-a-good-suggestion/ - Here's one from 2013

https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/6033-rules-for-unusual-price-suggestions/ - Here are the rules for making Unusual Price Suggestions, definitely worth the long read

https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/59832-guide-how-to-use-the-compare-function/ - Alberny's compare function guide, I will be elaborating quite heavily on this since technology has advanced and scripts are now publicly available for everyone

https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/67144-suggestion-guide-what-is-a-mini/ - Lemon's mini guide

https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/72261-suggestion-guide-what-is-a-buyout-cap/ - Lemon's buyout cap

 

Onto the actual content of the post:

Actually, I lied, we aren't pricing anything yet. Lets get you kitted out with all the NECESSARY scripts to make a price suggestion.

First, you need to install Tampermonkey - https://www.tampermonkey.net/

This is what you need to manage and install pretty much all the scripts you need when price suggesting.

These are pinned inside the backpack.tf discord - https://discord.gg/f5VS7cr - under the #suggestion-discussion channel but I'll reiterate them here

 

Scripts:

This is arguably the most important script you will ever install regarding Unusual Price Suggestions

https://github.com/juliarose/backpack.tf-premium-sales-finder

Julia's fabulous script allows you to get easy access to compare links instead of opening up the seller's profile, clicking compare, going back to the history to check when the seller sold the item, then fiddle with the compare link until you narrow the sale down.

With this script, all you do is open an item history, scroll click the seller and buyer compare links and bap, unusual movement. Sometimes you will have to toggle the dates by a day before or a day after but it's often very accurate. This saves so much time and I cannot express how important this script is in terms of efficiency.

 

https://github.com/mninc/gladiator.tf-stats-bptf

Gladiator.tf stats and snapshots. These indicate the purchases and sales of a certain item (Unusual in this instance) within the last 30 days. This is useful when determining whether an item was dumped to a bot and also very useful to find buyouts of items, to determine if a sale will cap or not. However, you can't 100% trust the stats, which I will get into at a later point.

 

https://github.com/mninc/keyprice-links

This is necessary to make Marketplace.tf and Mannco.store sales easier to decipher. It averages the keyprice in a week period surrounding the sale and automatically divides the sale by the key price at the time to get the sale in terms of keys.

 

https://github.com/NetroScript/backpack.tf-miscellaneous-extensions

This script is actually rather useful for general trading purposes but it also gives the added benefit of "Skin Search". Backpack.tf is pretty irritating when it comes to dealing with skins in any aspect, don't get me started on festivized unusual/decorated weapons and their stats pages. But this very easily shows unusual weapons with the click of a button.

 

https://gist.github.com/juliarose/fc00ff2507096c2a5f8a899f4e2564b0

This script is used to open the histories of keys in a compare link. Honestly, I use this sparingly since my laptop might die if it tried opening 200 tabs at once, my limit is somewhere just above 100. 

 

https://forums.backpack.tf/topic/47731-script-ultimate-inventory-history-and-scm-history-viewer-the-history-bastard/

This script is quite useful for general trading purposes, it does mess up SCM so disable it whenever you are viewing the Steam Community Market and you should be good to go.

This script compresses keys and ref in your own trade history. It's very useful to quickly determine how many keys were involved in a trade that you made, instead of counting the number of keys in a very long screenshot.

 

https://github.com/dyhli/plugin-bottf-stats-bptf

This is kind of a dumb script that I still have. The reason I have it is because it disables the graphs of "Number in existence", "Level Distribution" as well as "Paints" and "Strange Parts"

It's kind of a really dumb "quality of life" script so I scroll less when I want to make a suggestion. You really don't need this but when I livestream how I make a suggestion, this'll explain why I don't have those graphs.

 

Finally here's a nice quality of life script made by Poespas (👏 Team 👏 2)

https://pastebin.com/bkbMjdnL - you need make this a script yourself via the following steps - https://imgur.com/a/hERyvls

What this script does is that for the suggestors that create price suggestions right inside the suggestion box, the progress is saved if you either accidentally Ctrl + R the tab (You would lose all your progress if you accidentally refreshed the page) or close the tab and can't Ctrl + Shift + T the tab back. It's an excellent QOL script which has helped me to keep track of suggestions and have them autosaved. (I still save my suggestions in word documents that are saved to my PC, but that's really for personal and formatting reasons.

 

These are the scripts that I use whenever I make a price suggestion, really, I'd probably die without them. Thanks to all the creators of these awesome scripts. Much love.

 

Alright, the actual content of the post:

Okay, you've downloaded all the scripts I've recommended you install and now you are ready to try your hand at making your first Unusual Price Suggestion.

What hat do you want to price suggest? Maybe it's a hat you just traded for and you want to price it since you paid more than it's outdated backpack.tf price.

Note: You do NOT need backpack.tf premium to make unusual price suggestions, though it certainly speeds up the process, there are more than enough people active and willing inside the backpack.tf discord to provide the necessary indate histories for you if you ask politely.

 

Let's take the Purple Energy Noble Amassment of Hats as an example.

First, find the stats page of the Unusual in question.

https://backpack.tf/stats/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10

You want to hover over the unusual and select "Search"

image.png.72a6654b9fa178c07e6a210c6897af5e.png

This should bring you to the following page:

https://backpack.tf/premium/search?item=Noble Amassment of Hats&quality=5&tradable=1&craftable=1&australium=-1&particle=10&killstreak_tier=0

I can't show this page in screenshots since that would be sharing premium information to other users, but with Julia's Premium Sales Finder script, the histories highlighted in Green mean that the history has moved in the past 60 days and the histories highlighted in Orange have moved in the past 60 - 90 days.

At this point, I would advise you scroll click/ctrl + left click all the histories that have moved in the past 90 days and get them all lined up on your browser so you don't have to keep going back and forth.

"ah, but aj, there's a duped history where it's green/orange, what do I do now?!!"

I would still recommend you open the history in a new tab, duped histories can be used to price Unusuals under the value of 30 keys; they can also be used to raise the price of an unusual if there have not been any clean sales and in some circumstances, also be used to determine if an unusual should be priced based off clean sales of the Unusual in question.

 

Your browser should look something like this.

image.thumb.png.5923080546b20c5d61a28b9e49dee0c9.png

Next, I go back to the stats page and scroll down until I reach the "Suggestions" heading.

Here you want to click on the blue Plus sign - "Create a new suggestion"

image.png.b98c78b2568a876cba9d28b1a8f1f638.png

https://backpack.tf/vote/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10 - this brings you to this page and if you have the autosaving script, things should be a breeze from here on out.

Note: You can make this box bigger, yes some people did not realise that!

https://gyazo.com/91f10fafc6763b365c204d8b92234e3b - just follow this gif, I tend to make the box a decent size based off how many histories I have, it comes with time and experience.

 

Alright, now we can get started with actually typing something substantial.

 

I lied again, we haven't quite yet got to how to actually make the price suggestion, I'm just going to nitpick about formatting.

There are a lot of times where I've checked suggestions inside the backlog that have been so terribly formatted I honestly don't want to dig through the suggestion. It's really not difficult to at least incorporate some spacing inside a price suggestion, quite frankly, 95% of poorly formatted suggestions could be fixed with line breaks and adequate spacing.

 

I follow a fairly basic formatting for my suggestions.

 

First line: If the Unusual is a mini for another hat, I will say "Mini for x". If the price suggestion was requested by a certain user, then I'd typically say "Requested by x" and if the suggestion was created off my own whims, then I'll try to make something witty up on the spot. "yeet" also works great.

 

Make your price suggestions more like these:

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f1766df5d468f33311de382

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f1bb40afae498368d512826

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f8d31388ef48e2a516c16c4

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/6002116d070b84216b3f5c75

 

rather than this:

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/5f17666734b8795dd776c532

 

I would always recommend you provide both the seller and buyer compare links, and specifically in that order since it's easier to check sales using near ID that way.

Backpack.tf uses BBCode as formatting for boldeningunderlining and more.

image.png.d7e2d484b3cc1007019ac01298e6b4b7.png

I would really avoid using the custom link one, it's a bit of a faff and really not worth the set up.

Italics can spice things up sometimes

I sometimes use strikethrough when it's a resuggestion and sales have changed but it's not necessary.

 

Go crazy, just remember, efficiency is also very important, especially during events.

 

Back to the actual suggestion, reminder, hat is Purple Energy Noble, I forgot it after typing the formatting stuff out.

image.png.b33ca7bb4ca4096aa318b4ae002f2de0.png

Here is my set up, I copy paste the first item history that came up when I premium searched the unusual and indicate the first sale I will be looking at.

image.png.578f7fc091fb7d094c506230623a65ce.png

I go in this order since it is important for when using the "Near ID" function. Really this should have it's own forums post but I'll do it here.

You will open the following compare links:

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198063438304#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199157082802#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800

 

Now, you'll notice the hat actually cannot be seen at all. This typically happens when an unusual is traded extremely quickly.

It should also be noted that the "buyer" in this instance is actually marked on backpack.tf as being a suspected alt of a site banned account:

image.png.b58ac64e8dd44cf126f2314d618026ed.png

Whether the site banned account was banned for having an NSFW profile picture, banned for scamming, or banned for trading/gambling with scammers, we will never know. I try to not use sales with most site banned people unless there is good reason to include it, e.g. they aren't banned for scamming someone.

 

Near ID:

image.thumb.png.2749ad78161fc4d894a0ac83ea767006.png

Copy the buyer's ID number and paste it into the SELLER'S compare link:

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198063438304#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800 - this one

https://gyazo.com/8c2c5cac69e3bc7da4acc40245fae5d3 - here is a gif showing how to do it, you can press the "Enter" key after pasting the number in to check which items match ID.

 

Matching ID means that it is highly likely that those items were involved in the trade. I don't want to go into specifics here since really, it deserves its own forums guide but that's just how Near ID works.

As we can see, the 53 keys match, so I would say "Sold for 53 keys, suspect buyer, on the fence of using the sales"

 

And then we move to the second sale, do the exact same thing. Opening seller's compare link and then buyer's compare link and checking ID.

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199157082802#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800
https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199125348079#!/compare/1629590400/1629676800
Sold for 43 keys
 

"aj, I tried finding the sale using Near ID and nothing matches, what do I do now, I'm having a panic att-"

Some of the time, the sale is just untraceable and there isn't anything you can do. Sometimes the sale might have occurred via Steam Community Market, Marketplace, Mannco or cash was involved. Most of the time, it's due to an item moving too quickly but another very plausible reason is the hat is being dumped to other bot buy orders.

As we can see in the same PE Noble history - https://backpack.tf/item/9934169582, the 3 recent users in the history are all bots so the logical conclusion is that the owners of the bots have taken the unusual off the bot and redumped it to get keys back etc etc.

These can just be marked as "untrace" but you can also use gladiator stats to determine the bot buy order dumps that happened here:

https://gladiator.tf/sales?item=Purple Energy Noble Amassment of Hats
Make sure to select the "permanent link" for the page if you are using it in a suggestion

image.thumb.png.5e5de0557e818b07269be9bfc18a78b2.png

https://gladiator.tf/sales?item=Purple Energy Noble Amassment of Hats&at=2021-08-29T23:00:55.614Z (Example)

Bot buy orders can be trusted for the most part. and they seem to match up pretty well. You can also check snapshots on the day and cross check if the bot buy order is the same as the sale in the history.

Sometimes if a bot has a buy order on an unusual and that unusual is offered in bulk on another item the bot owns, the gladiator bot will treat the unusual offered in bulk as if it was purchased at that buy order amount. So always make sure to double check if compare links aren't completely clear!

 

So far, you should be up to here:

https://imgur.com/a/fVPkwZM - I have to resort to imgur albums now, reached the max total size of files I think

 

Next, you move onto the next history and do the appropriate formatting and continue checking sales.

Luckily for us the PE Noble didn't sell for any other unusuals or items for that purpose. It means you've successfully manoeuvred having to make any minis and pure sales galore! What a win.

The only snag in this whole operation is the duped sales.

One of the duped histories sold on Marketplace:

https://backpack.tf/item/264377094

https://marketplace.tf/items/tf2/137;5;u10

We can't be completely certain which sale it was in July, but we can try to find out which one it is by looking at the buyer's compare links.

https://imgur.com/a/fJSiEQt - you want to click this link and start fiddling with the dates.

Since the sales on Marketplace were July 16th and July 24th, we are checking to see when the PE Noble enters the buyers inventory.

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198348930851#!/compare/1625875200/1626480000

As we can see here, the PE Noble enters the inventory between July 10th and July 17th meaning that the DUPED PE Noble sold on Marketplace on July 16th meaning we should really exclude that sale from the suggestion. You can still make a note of it but you can't use it to make a range in this case. It'll still definitely be used as support.

 

The other DUPED history for the PE Noble also is not a sale.

https://backpack.tf/item/231121586

In a clean history, as well as a duped history, the ID on the left should always go up since the item is moving from inventory to inventory / nametagged / description tagged / painted. But a duped history has multiple versions of the same hat moving at varying times and is getting logged from inventories all over the place.

In this case:

https://imgur.com/a/Fa2sZ2Z

The ID goes down meaning the hat itself has not moved. You can confirm this by checking both users inventories.

https://imgur.com/a/QTSZR33

 

The PE Noble had a HIDDEN HISTORY, this is typically when an item is traded onto Marketplace and the Marketplace bot has not been refreshed meaning the history has "disappeared" from premium search. This can also happen when an item is listed on the Steam Community Market and other relevant bot trading sites.

 

Wrapping up the suggestion

Great, you have all the sales conveniently typed out and (fingers crossed) fully analysed. But this is where formatting will once again come in clutch. It is always to your own benefit that you re-type all the sales at the end in a "final conclusion / summary" of sorts.

In a suggestion as lengthy as this one, I typically open up notepad and have it hovering over the suggestion box to record what sales were in an easy fashion.

https://gyazo.com/152968c592930a9b4324155d5e60490e - gif of what I mean here

 

I copy paste the sales under a separate heading. At this stage, the sales aren't in a specific order.

https://miniwebtool.com/sort-numbers/

I use this tool to copy paste the sales I have in order to have them in "ascending order"

https://imgur.com/a/W9Lx03w

 

Finally, I have my sales in order and can conclude the suggestion with some reasonings as to which sales to be included or not.

 

Since the first 53 key buy dumped for "43 keys" seemingly, it seems fitting to exclude the 53 key sale as well as the 43 key dump since it is under current buy orders.

https://backpack.tf/stats/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10 - it's now important to check out the current listings of the unusual

https://imgur.com/a/wvQXh8S - I'd personally recommend clicking on the "bumped x minutes ago" to find when an item was listed. This is sometimes important when making ranges to see how long an unusual has been unsold for. This can be cross checked with gladiator snapshots or checking the history of an unusual to see how long it has been listed at x amount.

 

In this case, there are 3 bots at 56, 56 and 57 keys respectively.

Buyers are now just shy of 50 keys so from our sales, we can determine that the optimal range to be pulled is likely 54 - 55 keys, 61 seems high with the 3 sellers at 57 and less, and 53 dumped for less as well as suspicious buyer.

This typically comes with experience, if you are having a hard time pulling a range, feel free to join the backpack.tf discord and ask in #suggestion-discussion, ping price mods if you are desparate, I've definitely bugged them a lot over ranges.

 

Scroll back up to change the "Low Value" to 54 and the "High Value" to 55 - https://imgur.com/a/5Ri2ZMT

Then scroll back down and click "Create Suggestion" - https://imgur.com/a/vHDf6l6

 

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/612c17d99cc2833d5f2ec3f2 - Tada, your suggestion is complete.

 

Conclusions from the guide

I hope the step by step was somewhat followable. Honestly, without an example, it would've been a lot more waffle.

Hopefully it is a digestible guide and enough to get you raring to make your first unusual price suggestion!

 

aj out, see you at the livestream.

 

 

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6 hours ago, ajdislikesyournamingpolicy said:

I would still recommend you open the history in a new tab, duped histories can be used to price Unusuals under the value of 30 keys; they can also be used to raise the price of an unusual if there have not been any clean sales and in some circumstances, also be used to determine if an unusual should be priced based off clean sales of the Unusual in question.

 

Here is my set up, I copy paste the first item history that came up when I premium searched the unusual and indicate the first sale I will be looking at.

image.png.578f7fc091fb7d094c506230623a65ce.png

 

In a clean history, as well as a duped history, the ID on the left should always go up since the item is moving from inventory to inventory / nametagged / description tagged / painted. But a duped history has multiple versions of the same hat moving at varying times and is getting logged from inventories all over the place.

In this case:

https://imgur.com/a/Fa2sZ2Z

The ID goes down meaning the hat itself has not moved. You can confirm this by checking both users inventories.

https://imgur.com/a/QTSZR33

 

The PE Noble had a HIDDEN HISTORY, this is typically when an item is traded onto Marketplace and the Marketplace bot has not been refreshed meaning the history has "disappeared" from premium search. This can also happen when an item is listed on the Steam Community Market and other relevant bot trading sites.

 

https://backpack.tf/stats/Unusual/Noble Amassment of Hats/Tradable/Craftable/10 - it's now important to check out the current listings of the unusual

https://imgur.com/a/wvQXh8S - I'd personally recommend clicking on the "bumped x minutes ago" to find when an item was listed. This is sometimes important when making ranges to see how long an unusual has been unsold for. This can be cross checked with gladiator snapshots or checking the history of an unusual to see how long it has been listed at x amount.

 

Some additional points for clarity/support:

  • Duped sales can also be used if they average higher than clean sales and aren't outliers
  • If someone is suggesting and doesn't want to download scripts, they can open the compare links by clicking on the "Last seen" date, then the "compare" button; there will be the option to select 2 dates to compare the inventory between - one should be the "Last seen" date, and the other should be either 1 day before or after, whichever shows the item leaving (unless the item was quicksold, like you mentioned)
    • If the item is quicksold, 99% of the time the correct compare will be between the "Last seen" date and 1 day beforeimage.png.7530fddfa0a470cee95c07f6b0d9cda1.png
  • Sometimes for Duped histories, the buyer may be several people away from the seller in the history, so keep an eye out for that
    • The ID colors don't designate the order of sales - green doesn't always have to sell to green and likewise for blue
    • For example, The most sweet girl [24/7] sold this Bonk Boy to Intel, and Intel sold it to Oli - https://backpack.tf/item/554325252 
  • You can attempt to find hidden histories in a few ways:
    • Check the Gladiator listings (you can check every prior week or so) to see if you can find a seller that's not in any of the histories you were able to see for the suggestion; then, you can go to that seller's backpack on that day to find the history
    • Look through prior suggestions for the item you're pricing to see if any of the item histories used for those are currently hidden
    • Try looking at the cached backpack.tf and marketplace pages for the item you're pricing; you can do this by searching for the URL on Google and clicking the 3 dots, then clicking "Cached" (there isn't always the option to)
      • Sometimes for Marketplace listings, the seller's price and item history won't be visible, so click "Text-only version" at the top of the screen to be able to see itimage.thumb.png.a3ce906c2152b239690dc6f84a1b980a.png
  • It's also useful to check the listings on SCM and mannco.store, as well as other bot sites (there are a lot though, so having Premium will let you see which, if any, histories are owned by bots from various sites to prevent you from having to check every single site)
    • You can see prior sales of the item you're pricing on mannco.store by typing the name of the item in the search bar and changing the "In stock" filter to "Out of stock" if none of the item are currently listed
    • If you're fine using scripts, there's one that will show you the item histories of items listed on SCM maybe 1% of the time, but it's better than nothing 
    • If clicking the calculator isn't your thing, you can use https://manic.tf/keyprice/ to convert marketplace and mannco.store sales from cash into Keys

can confirm "yeet" works as a suggestion header

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