Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

"edit: an increase / decrease in the absolute - and relative per player - number of ref in existence has only very little to do with Keys rising in Metal since Oct last year, why is that so hard to understand?"

Ummm. The volume of ref in the game is exactly the reason people state for the "devaluation" of ref. There is no other stated reason.

Not by those that actually know what they are talking about.
This has been discussed many many times before. Main reason: Community Market[forums.backpack.tf].

btw, I think i mixed up the "price elasticity" argument

I don't know what we are talking about here anymore.

There are facts that cannot be changed just because someone has a theory, that is futile. The Bill's is traded for 8 Keys, no more no less, for a long time. Whatever the reason, that's how it is and it makes absolutely no sense to say "it should be", for the simple fact because it's not.

If you want to understand why, there are reasons that have nothing to do with the value or price of Metal and we do not need to repeat them again.

One valid question might be, why did some low tier Vintage and Genuine items not change their price in Metal too.
So if anything, you should've made a discussion: The Vintage SBS should be 1.44-1.66 ref now.

Why that is not the case, I can only speculate. But my guess would be, that low price goods do not need to follow overall "inflation" as quickly.

("inflation" is not really the correct term here, but I guess you know what I mean)

Imagine a chocolate bar that has a price of $1. It had that price many years ago and it still does.
That is a convenient price many are willing to pay and sell for. So maybe that chocolate bar was kind of overpriced years ago and is sort of underpriced now, even though we have inflation irl.

But it doesn't really matter, because years ago spending a dollar was not an issue and today it is not either.
But if you were to raise the price of that chocolate bar every year by a few cents to adjust for inflation, you can't pay with a bill anymore and need pocket change. That is very inconvenient.

That is why I think the price of low price / value items is not as elastic to the value of the currency they are traded for.

Many vintage Weapons are still traded for a reclaimed for that reason, I believe. Maybe that will change when the Metal has gone down in value even further and a new convenient price like 2 rec is more appropriate, maybe not.

You make the mistake to cherry pick a few low value (and price) items and draw the conclusion from there to high value items that generally have more price elasticity.

You need to work the other way around and then you will come to the same conclusions as most of us do.

edit: an increase / decrease in the absolute - and relative per player - number of ref in existence has only very little to do with Keys rising in Metal since Oct last year, why is that so hard to understand?

Since you're buying different specific items in each trade, I see no problem.

That might have something to do with the servers being overloaded at the moment. Give it some time and try again.

Point being, nobody here cares what happens in a private Steam Chat. Close, possibly block, move on!
If everybody was to complain about the stupid things they get when someone adds them, this forum would be filled with nothing else.

Although it is / has always been more reasonable to buy a Key in the Store and then trade for your Hat / Misc / Weapon, ppl did and still do buy in Mann Co, even old items.

But the demand for Craft Hats is nowhere near the supply you would get from making them marketable, which is basically the same as having Metal marketable.

One thing that keeps Metal from falling even more quickly now, is that the PayPal grey market is not very accessible to most, especially not for selling.

(Btw, $1 Wallet Money is not the same as $1 PayPal Money. I would estimate about 60%, but that is not important and most of us probably know that anyway.)

And because the supply of Metal will undoubtedly always be higher than the demand, I can only see the price fall, for both, PP and SW.

What would those "bots" do with all that cheap metal? Eventually you want your money not in Steam Wallet funds, but in cash you can pay your rent with.

There is nowhere near enough demand to buy all that new Market Metal for PP.

You would buy Keys and Promos that you can still sell for PayPal money. But because there is an abundance of cheap metal around and low supply of Keys, you would have to buy for ever increasing Key prices, just like today, only many times faster.

Originally posted by norby89:

If he has an account restriction that won't show up on his profile.

An "account restriction" is not the same as a Valve trade ban or probation?

Doesn't show you're trade banned to me.

Have you enabled Steam Guard? You need to have Steam Guard enabled and it had to be enabled for at least 15 days without interruption to be able to trade.

Level 1 and 7 have this unfortunate bad reputation. In the past there where a lot more lvl 1 and 7 Max's that were duped on a large scale than others.

But Valve unduped all Max's some time back so that there is no difference anymore.
Yet their reputation has not recovered. Stupid, but that's just the way it is.

Since we already crossed the line of discussing the price, I bought a lvl 1 for 44 Keys, and it is probably not duped either although the owner seemed to have that impression. But that took a while too, so I would guess that a price of 46-48 Keys is what you can expect, unless you want to wait a long time and find someone like you that naively buys for 2 Buds.

Although it doesn't really matter (price wise) if any Max's is duped either, lvl 1 and 7 are still not accepted by a lot of traders for stubborn, historical, self-fulfilling prophecy kinds of reasons, and are therefore hard to sell.
That is the reason many eventually sell for less than the usual price of 2 Buds.

Originally posted by norby89:

I doubt the majority of key holders care about opening crates. Keys ARE currency, they can be used to trade for items, games, RL cash and recently they can be sold on the market for Steam Wallet which in turn can be used to buy games or items. It'll be interesting to see what happens when (or if) Valve decides to make metal marketable since then Ref would suddenly become useful.

Agree about the Key part. Although I don't have a good idea right now how to properly discredit his "future crate" value theory, it is very far fetched.

But ref marketable? I hope not!

What will happen, imo, is that all that hoarded Metal (1.2m Refined alone) will flood the Market (like crates) and become even more worthless than it is now. I don't see any reason why the demand would rise equally.
My guess, then we would really see a runaway Key price in terms of Metal in a way you can only imagine in your worst nightmare.

That is why I am certain that neither Metal nor Craftables will ever become marketable.