Added a general warning to trade post, if it's against the rules alert me and I'll take it down.

No, what other users are selling has nothing to do with your trade. If one cares about duping then they should do some research before buying. You can't go around saying things are duped, regardless of the location you do it (other's trades, your trades, etc).

Removed but I don't agree with the logic. Direct callouts? Certainly. Saying "be sure to check for duping as there are some offers on here for duped versions" I think should be fine. I'm not saying the others selling the item are "guilty" of anything, as they could certainly not know. However I do have a technically better product. Not only that but I know I personally research a deal before committing to it including interest seen in other trades, level of competition, and relative pricing. Not all impressions given are done from a direct offer, as what I mentioned is a good way of gauging value. Same goes for the market (though granted the guy is asking for way high), if a duped item is on there that technically rivals mine, my offer may appear like a worse deal even if they don't decide to pursue the market price.

Regardless of above, the market may be cutthroat but reminders to be watchful are always a good idea. A reactive response of "should have known better" or "now you know better" is like saying it's their own problem for not asking about something they didn't know existed, and it's things like that that still have me in a panic on larger deals since the only help you get is when someone posts a message detailing their own screw-up. and you think to yourself "yeah would have gotten me"

Why is your item a "better product"? They're practically the same. Just because a select number of people are OCD about dupes, why do you think everyone should care?

Admit that the only reason you'd want others to know is so you can sell your item for more than it's actual worth. Price manipulation.

It doesn't matter if I want it clean or not, it matters what the buyer wants and more importantly what he thinks HIS next buyer will want. Perception that a tainted item is harder to sell or sells for less is going to impact it even if it wouldn't in the end.

If there are 4 of an item on outpost all selling for normal value it impacts my ability to sell. And yes if 4 items all likely to be resold and functionally equivalent but 3 of the 4 may be considered less desired by 20% of traders, the one that is more desirable is a superior product. Even if a person sits on a hat, they usually keep a trade going for longshots or unexpected. If something impacts those chances that impacts value.

But I guess I'm trying to drive up price with a b/o at 4 buds when the dupes have a B/O of 4.5 and 4.25 buds with one also being sold on market simultaneously for 198 dollars. Someone better watch out it's a shark attack.

Originally posted by norby89:

Why is your item a "better product"? They're practically the same. Just because a select number of people are OCD about dupes, why do you think everyone should care?

Admit that the only reason you'd want others to know is so you can sell your item for more than it's actual worth. Price manipulation.

This is terrible for many reasons. Stop jumping to conclusions. You concede they are "practically the same" which is exactly the same as "not the same." If 1% of the market is willing to pay 1% more for an item due to any reason, that item is by definition more valuable. You have no right to say he is attempting to manipulate the price.

Originally posted by Ryox Sinfar:

Saying "be sure to check for duping as there are some offers on here for duped versions" I think should be fine.

If the buyer cares for this they will check the item's history regardless of this statement being present or not.

The rules apply to everyone. If we make an exception on this case then we would have to allow all kinds of indirect trade references.

Originally posted by Ryox Sinfar:

It doesn't matter if I want it clean or not, it matters what the buyer wants and more importantly what he thinks HIS next buyer will want. Perception that a tainted item is harder to sell or sells for less is going to impact it even if it wouldn't in the end.

That perception is only carried on by people like you. As a matter of fact I've sold many duped hats for full price and nobody even mentioned that they're duplicates. I'd say the number of people who care about dupes is minimal, the majority of them being quickbuyers/sharks which makes a lot of sense.

Originally posted by Ryox Sinfar:

But I guess I'm trying to drive up price with a b/o at 4 buds when the dupes have a B/O of 4.5 and 4.25 buds with one also being sold on market simultaneously for 198 dollars. Someone better watch out it's a shark attack.

Then why do they affect you so much that you consider it's ok to call them out? I mean if your hat is cheapest on the market and is "the superior product" then it shouldn't impact your ability to sell.

Originally posted by POOP TITTIES:

This is terrible for many reasons. Stop jumping to conclusions. You concede they are "practically the same" which is exactly the same as "not the same." If 1% of the market is willing to pay 1% more for an item due to any reason, that item is by definition more valuable. You have no right to say he is attempting to manipulate the price.

I might have been quick to jump to conclusions, I apologize for that. Either way if I and a select few others are a collector of lv89 hats and I'm willing to pay 2 ref for one just so I can complete my collection faster that does not make the item more valuable. It might be valuable to me but there's the other 99% who'd disagree.

He might not be manipulating the price directly but saying derogatory statements targeted at the other owners might or might not affect their ability to sell. It's not cool.

Originally posted by Blue Screen of Dea†h:

If the buyer cares for this they will check the item's history regardless of this statement being present or not.

The rules apply to everyone. If we make an exception on this case then we would have to allow all kinds of indirect trade references.

Fair enough that it can set precedence, but I still disagree. Granted I think a major motivator in this instance is the number of dupes vs real. The only other non dupe on sale is someone who was "cashing out" and never logged back into steam since posting, nor bumped. Adding "if it's enough of an issue" to the mix won't help dealing with other cases.

That being said I think the logic is slightly flawed that it is considered badmouthing a trade if I was to make a checkable claim regarding my item compared to others, when this is essentially admission that such a claim would be detrimental and yet not posting the information is considered fine. I wouldn't want to put this in my post if the information was readily available or required on the site. That being said I do not know the finer points of checking/verifying dupes.

@Norby:

Frankly I'm tired of the stubbornness. You seem to think you are making arguments in a discussion. What you have provided is conjecture without basis and reliant on repeatedly ignoring facts that have been explicitly stated by others and implicitly implied by yourself. While many of the things I have said cannot be quantified and measured they are known to exist which is the foundation of the argument. So here is the final rundown of what has been said. Pardon the outtakes, and any reading this are encouraged to find and read anything quoted in full.

You're comments:
1. "Why is your item a "better product"? They're practically the same." - Self defeating argument. A battery that holds 1% more charge than another and is otherwise identical is superior.
2. "Admit that the only reason you'd want others to know is so you can sell your item for more than it's actual worth." - Slander presented without evidence which could be readily found. The truth of the matter could be discovered in under 2 minutes time.
3. "That perception is only carried on by people like you." - I await the trade I mentioned. Again unverified slander. Furthermore if advising new traders who wants to continued trading I would not only be wrong to not mention the beliefs on duping but actively deceiving them. If they said they wanted X hat and I believed it was their "end game" hat, I would advise searching out a dupe at a lower price to help them, again to at least not even mention the option would be morally inappropriate.
4. "As a matter of fact I've sold many duped hats for full price and nobody even mentioned that they're duplicates." - Assuming truth, still vague as to whether or not anyone ever did care. Does not mention if they were publicly stated as duped, does not mention anyone who explicitly stated they knew it was duped and did not care. These facts do not defeat this argument but the argument can't be made without this clarity.
5. "I'd say the number of people who care about dupes is minimal, the majority of them being quickbuyers/sharks which makes a lot of sense" - Unverifiable conjecture. Fact that after years of duping existing that it will almost never be mentioned in trade information leaves doubt on it being true.
6. "I mean if your hat is cheapest on the market and is "the superior product" then it shouldn't impact your ability to sell." - another comment not made to you in this thread would suffice to counter this argument. If you wish to repeatedly insult me for the argument I'm making (numbers 2 and 3) it can be expected for you to read all new comments in such a short thread and consider previous comments when making new claims.
7. "I and a select few others are a collector of lv89 hats and I'm willing to pay 2 ref for one just so I can complete my collection faster that does not make the item more valuable." - Verifiable incorrect, self defeating regardless, incorrect definition of value. Every hat has a level, every level could theoretically have a collector(s), therefore when comparing a lvl 24 hat to a level 89 hat if they have the same odds of a collector and assuming same value to collector, they are equal. Self defeating in that if your statement was true you have just stated that it is possible for someone to get more for that version. If there were red and blue crates, and red had a 1% chance of unusual, and blue had a 1.0001% chance of unusual, would they have the same price? If so which would you be buying? Value is incorrectly defined as how much you get for it. If an aspect reduces interest to 95% of normal levels, you've increased average time for sale. In this time an item that moved faster for same profit could be on to the next trade cycle. This alters value.
8. "He might not be manipulating the price directly" - Implies malicious intent, I can guarantee you have 0 evidence of this despite this username dating back roughly 12 years. Two instances in my life I'll freely admit to. Lying in deals in Ultima Online (most cutthroat community I ever encountered and was 12-13 at the time, still no excuse), and in Ragnarok Online purchasing all instances of an item in a city 2-3 times, and establishing a new price about 5-10% higher than normal. There, you have my skeletons.
9. "saying derogatory statements targeted at the other owners might or might not affect their ability to sell. It's not cool." - Take a look at literally every number here besides 6 and 8, which includes two direct insults. Each one claims either implicitly or explicitly that duped status does not impact worth. Either 80% of your arguments you don't believe, or you don't believe this one. Frankly I think you just want me to be a bad person.

My arguements:
1. "However I do have a technically better product." - Proven, logic stated prior
2. "Not all impressions given are done from a direct offer" - Logic stated prior, I at least check how much interest items see from quicksearches. I consider it reasonable to claim a semi-random distribution of methods for determining the worth of an offer.
3. "if a duped item is on there that technically rivals mine, my offer may appear like a worse deal even if they don't decide to pursue the market price." - While this isn't the case in this instance it is no less true. I only need 1% of potential buyers to be impacted for this to be true.
4. "A reactive response of "should have known better" or "now you know better" is like saying it's their own problem for not asking about something they didn't know existed" - No force pushes new traders to educational resources. Therefore expecting complete knowledge is faulty logic. As a side note this logic exposes the new trader to the pitfall. Yet in this instance the trader is protected who is either 1. the exposed new trader or 2. omitting information intentionally.
5. "It matters what the buyer wants and more importantly what he thinks HIS next buyer will want" - Verifiable by previous arguments. If even 1% of traders consider this it is valid.
6. "Even if a person sits on a hat, they usually keep a trade going for longshots or unexpected" - usually may be too strong, I don't have enough data. This is a weak point however the point it is helping has other statements fully capable of carrying the point themselves. The point being re-iterated in number 1.
7. "But I guess I'm trying to drive up price with a b/o at 4 buds" - This was sarcasm and not to be taken at face value. That was a joke, and not intended as snide. However it and what follows implies verifiable fact with numbers to back it up and can be checked independently.

The degree of vagueness may bother some but a reminder that only 1 deal is brokered. It is inconsequential if the percent of potential buyers impacted is 1% or 50%. It does not matter if those impacted are 1% less likely to buy my product or 99%. My argument is that if not making the information clear either prevents or delays sale, my trading has been impacted by reasonably verifiable details being withheld.

Facts from the guy who's name makes me wonder why whenever I go to respond to people on the internet they have these kind of names:
1. "If 1% of the market is willing to pay 1% more for an item due to any reason, that item is by definition more valuable." - Better put than my own arguments, someone with the knowledge could probably write a formula proving it.
2. "You concede they are "practically the same" which is exactly the same as "not the same."" - Employs direct definition of words used, verifiable, does not involve personal opinion.

Slightly depressing when someone with that name is more articulate :/

Ryfox,
It isn't worth it. Norby89 comes off as a know-it-all(though his apology is noteworthy) Obviously that entire post was nonsense but I'm sure he has a stronger understanding of the fundementals of economics than I do.

By the way, it's a family name.

I don't doubt he does considering I looked at his operation which is what bugs me all the more. Clearly his business decisions in this virtual market have worked, and success without knowledge of these things on that scale is incredibly unlikely. Didn't call him ignorant, called him stubborn. I assure you I know the look of it.

Though you do touch on the indicator for whats going on. Which is the apology. couple quotes from your post referencing his own post.

Originally posted by POOP TITTIES III:

This is terrible for many reasons.

Originally posted by POOP TITTIES III:

You have no right to say he is attempting to manipulate the price.

You literally call his post terrible and say that he has no right to make his claims. And receive and apology. My own post does not directly insult him though does feature the rather childish sarcasm at the end. It also says roughly the same thing (though again yours being clearer and more concise). And either way he would recognize either as true. Yet the apology goes to the more direct attack.

Now certainly if I were in his shoes the more mature post might prompt the same, but my guess is he read the top post, jumped to some conclusions, could of been in a bad mood, w/e and decided to be really peeved at me. Frankly I don't care, I do the same at times as I'm human. I don't even care if I had ended up in the wrong with something he knew that I didn't, but i just really can't stand the sullying of sound logic. Even if it doesn't impact any readers for TF2, they might reuse bad logic later for something similar or not so similar. Someone online saying 1+1=3 learned to add from somewhere and that propagation gets my goat. Don't care about being right, don't care about politics, economy, what's the best movie, cars, computer manufacturer, console, tf2 economy. Just don't leave bad logic laying around for others and I don't feel morally right reinforcing the behavior by leaving it off.

As example I have some posts on Reddit in responses to questions about new effects/rarity. I'm sure he knows lots more about it than I do. He is 100% welcome to point out mistakes I made though I tried to follow the best logic I could with information at hand and explain the reasoning. Very likely I am missing information he has. I will likely have some questions.

A lot of the above may seem overly elaborate, ridiculous, and seem like it comes with a tinfoil hat. As mentioned before I have no issues with sound logic.

Originally posted by Ryox Sinfar:

You're comments:

Your* Mr. President.

Originally posted by Ryox Sinfar:

1. "Why is your item a "better product"? They're practically the same." - Self defeating argument. A battery that holds 1% more charge than another and is otherwise identical is superior.

Comparing apples and oranges. Nope sir, if you take 2 identical batteries and you clone one of them the unique one won't suddenly hold 1% more charge.

Either way your question has been answered so no point in dragging this on so I'll leave it at this. The whole notion of duped hats being inferior products is silly. When I said they're practically the same as any other hat of the same kind I meant it. If you want to get really technical about it then a hat is called a dupe because internally it shares the same original ID with another hat. That's it! One little number that nobody can see unless they have the knowledge and use the right API call from the Steam web development kit.

The average user wouldn't know that dupes even exist if it weren't for history tracking websites. We have TF2Items which doesn't seem to be tracking the history of newly found/uncrated items, backpack.tf which stopped indicating whether an item is duped or not and TF2OP that sometimes has items with buggy history. All in all not a single reliable way of telling if an item is duped or not. So you then ask yourself, if I can't tell for certain then why should I care? "Well because my friend Jimmy said duped items are worthless and I believe him because he has a 10 year old Steam account." So this is how the perception is carried on by people like you (that wasn't an insult by the way, I was merely stating a fact).

Now we're talking about unusual hats that people wear to show off while playing. I can understand how a unique item collector would care about his Vintage Max Head to be non-duped before paying 100 buds for it. There's no difference ingame between a normal Max Head and a vintage one but then again he didn't buy it to show it off ingame. I can tell by personal experience that having duped unusuals didn't affect my ability to sell, but someone calling me out saying that my hat is duped and his isn't probably would scare off a couple of unknowing customers.

You also need to take a look at where dupes come from. Some people might think some evil wrongdoer has this factory where they take items and then multiply them. When in most cases they're the result of hijackings where the hijacker sells/quicksells the items and then Steam Support gives them back to the original owner but obviously they can't take it away from those who bought them since they had no part in it and were just using the trading system. So according to your views, the victims (the hijacked person and the buyer) should be punished because of this unfortunate event. "Oh you unboxed that hat? Haha, gg! It's duped now so it's worth half it's actual value!" Kind of unfair don't you think?

There's one particular type of trader that does care very much if an item is duped or not whose presence isn't quite welcome amongst the other traders. Quickbuyers. They will use any excuse to rip you off in the worst possible way. "You're selling this hat for 4 buds? Nuh-uh no can do, says right here your item is duped and I'm telling you, you'll never get rid of this hat. But lucky you I'll take it off your hands for 2 buds if you add me right now." They will then resell the hat for 4 buds and report anyone who even tries to mention it's duped.

So I'm asking you, how is a duped hat an inferior product? You never gave a clear answer other than "it just is because I say so and it's my duty to inform everyone else as well".

1) The question asked was already answered but I'll answer it again: No, you may not make any kind of reference to a trade that does not belong to you.

2) Sneeza already said that he will not ever tag hats as duped or not in the site, and the same principle applies to out users as well (that's why there's a rule forbidding this).

3) All items' values are subjective. If one cares about a hat being duped or not is not our problem. It's not our responsibility to teach people how to trade or the supposed value of things. If one wants to take up this job they are welcome to, as long as trades are not being used exclusively for that and other people are left alone.

4) This is not a place to comment on each other's ability to do or understand anything. If things get personal then we expect them to be carried on privately, not here.

And because of #4, I'm locking this.