Odds of trade-up contracts

[Onion-Turtle]

Has anyone here ever done a statistic on their trade-up contracts outputs?

 

I am mainly wondering about the logic when mixing different collections. This guide highlights both theories: 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2410569256 

If trade-ups in tf2 work the same way they do as in counter-Strike, mixing 9 or 8 items from the tough break collection with 1 or 2 items from the creepy crawly collection would yield an expected profit of about 25%. (This is off of community market prices with all taxes taken into account!)

 

And this is by far not the only trade up that would be profitable: the gargoyle collection and many others could have a lot of potential for +ev “gambling”.

 

However, if tf2 follows its own logic these trade-ups could yield a negative yield of 40-50 % per trade-up - which is even worse than cases.

 

I have about 50 of these trade-ups lined up for science (yes, I know this number of trade-ups won’t really prove anything, it might however be a good indicator)

Now I was wondering whether similar experiments have been publicly conducted before?

I’d love to hear some Input before I go and possibly (probably?) delete 400 bucks next week.

 

TL/DR: Will trading up 9 tough break skins + 1 creepy crawly collection skin give me the burly beast with a 1/12 chance or with a 1/30 chance? 

[F. Bomb Fitzgerald]

31 minutes ago, Onion-Turtle said:

TL/DR: Will trading up 9 tough break skins + 1 creepy crawly collection skin give me the burly beast with a 1/12 chance or with a 1/30 chance? 

OK here's how it works.  

 

The trade up will only allow you to put in items of the same tier (e.g. merc, commando, assassin, etc.) and quality (i.e. strange or not).  So if you wanted a chance at a burly beast, you'd need to put in at least one commando cosmetic from the creepy crawly collection, along with 9 commando cosmetics from any other case.  Now onto the chance calculation.

 

Assuming you put in only one creepy crawly item, you have a 1/10 chance to pull an assassin item from that collection.  But since there are 3 assassin items in the creepy crawly collection, you only have a 1/3 chance to get the burly beast.  So you have a 10% chance to get the collection you want, but only a 3.3% chance to get the burly beast specifically.  

[Onion-Turtle]

27 minutes ago, F. Bomb Fitzgerald said:

Assuming you put in only one creepy crawly item, you have a 1/10 chance to pull an assassin item from that collection.  But since there are 3 assassin items in the creepy crawly collection, you only have a 1/3 chance to get the burly beast.  So you have a 10% chance to get the collection you want, but only a 3.3% chance to get the burly beast specifically.  

Thanks for your reply!

Has this been shown statistically or is this just the common understanding? In CS this used to be the assumption as well, until someone crumbled the numbers and figured out that the collections with more possible results on a higher tier came up significantly more often than they should.

[AwesomeSause]

damn that's a good question and I cant wait to read these replies

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

3 hours ago, Onion-Turtle said:

Has this been shown statistically or is this just the common understanding?

This is on my todo list with my inventory history tool but I'm very slow moving on it.

[Wizard8]

The problem is supply. I was actually looking into some of these exact trade-ups yesterday, and as statistics go yes they are profitable over a large enough sample size, but unlike in cs there are very few items for sale at a stable price. Its basically still gambling just with favorable odds and you can only do it a couple times max for each trade-up. Even with trade-ups using newer items with greater supply the best you can find is like a 120% return assuming you don't get unlucky and its pointless risk to make like $20.

[Onion-Turtle]

11 hours ago, Wizard8 said:

The problem is supply.

 

That is definitely a factor, I know. But with enough patience and good buy orders you can scoop up a fair amount of fillers for trade ups.

 

The gambling part is also true to a degree. It is definitely risky and even if you find enough items to do 30+ trade ups there is a decent chance of loosing money. 
 

However, the biggest risk I see atm is that my basic hypothesis is wrong and trade-ups in CS2 and TF2 calculate the odds completely different.