You should address that at the tf2r.com forum, not here. Nobody here can help you with that.

The 15 days trade restriction because of Steam Guard applies to everyone, regardless of premium, F2P, what game (TF2 DOTA 2) or when you added a game to your inventory.

The thing is, that Steam says: "once you have games in your Steam account" (that are not F2P), not: once you made a purchase.
The only thing you get restricted in if you haven't made a purchase within a year that I have heard of until now, was selling at the Community Market.

Since you can get an unlimited Steam account by redeeming "a Gift or Guest Pass on Steam" or activating "a retail game on Steam", that do not require you to make a purchase with Steam too, I see no reason why using an Upgrade to Premium Gift should not work the same way.

If it does not, and I don't really know if it should, I think that would not make sense and be just wrong.

I recently gave an Upgrade To Premium Gift to a friend. Contrary to the wiki I have not received my Professor Speks yet, which I assumed would happen right away. So I think there is a chance this is just a glitch or simply needs some time.
Getting the hiring badge takes at least a week too, for some odd reason.

But I don't know either.

Originally posted by MA☝Omgwtfbbqstfu™:

anyways are you sure you traded for a gift, or didyou get a backpack expander..

i looked at your bp, you do not have a hire date badge, meaning you aren't premium. show us a screenshot of your backpack inventory history page, should show if you traded for a premium gift or not.

He must have had a premium gift, because his number of backpack slots is 300 and not 150.
The hire badge is also awarded to F2P, it takes at least 7 days for it to drop.

Maybe Steam just takes a while to "notice" you now have a premium game before the Steam premium features become available. I assume you have tried restarting Steam.

I too find it hard to believe the premium gift would not give you full community access. That you haven't used a credit card should only prevent you from selling in the Community Market.

Anyway, it should not be hard to find someone willing to give you a DOTA 2 invite (I don't have any), as they are practically worthless. People sell them for 1 crate each.

Originally posted by KingOfHeart:

Sometimes an autobump trade for keys will have a few keys for a min, then the stock is already gone..hard to tell sometimes

Pretty much the same thing to me. They could just close that trade. It's easy to make a new trade for selling Keys.

Originally posted by ScootALU_:

Sadly, a premium Team Fortress 2 account does not allow one to add friends, join chats, etc.

Are you saying that you cannot use steam premium features such as adding friends after you have used the Upgrade To Premium Gift but have no other games in your library?

If that is the case, could you please tell us if activating DOTA 2 helped.
(or did you simply forgot to actually use the Gift?)

This is not the place to trade. A lot of buds are duped, not hard to find them.

Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

We have reached consensus on the matter (with Uranium235), and that is that the volume increase of refined is not at the core "the event". That the most powerfull influencer in this is secondary market sales of keys. It is the fact that the willing sellers are now divided into two groups thus effecting the supply curve in the trading market. The natural equalibrium is the pricepoint of indifference. The prices of bp.tf were used.

The Community Market is sth. that cannot easily be compared to the in-game trading. It's not only the fact that you can sell and buy keys there that affects metal value (and key price), but the fact that it exists at all.

It's not that people are divided into two groups, but that there are two different market places that compete. Each individual adjusts their supply curve for each market, which have different "currencies" not really exchangeable and with changing cost to transfer, depending on current market conditions (prices of different goods that you are after: keys being one of them).

Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

The next challenge is to police other items who's prices may not adjust fast enough. If we can adopt the principles in this two market problem than sone traders can be reported and banned.

What?

In my opinion, Keys will probably always rise in terms of Metal in the long run because of free drops (/idling). The question is how fast, and have we reached a point where the pace is beginning to slow down again.

Originally posted by Regen:

send you to a (Russian) steam login site

Looks like it originates in Australia

Originally posted by i lik typo s:

Is there any part of that you'd like explained/defended?

No, discussed too many times before, here and at backpack.tf.

That would mean that there had to be a sudden explosion of new TF2 players since Oct 2012. I find that hard to believe too. Especially for a game many years old.

http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=440q570&from=0

As one can see, nothing really special happened concerning the number of players / idle accounts at the end of October 2012, when the Key price in Metal began to skyrocket.