Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

Demand for Bills did not just increase just because the key did. BILLS hasn't updated in 6 months. Are u kidding me.

I absolutely have no clue what you're talking about. What point did I prove? There always was and always will be demand for Bill's Hat as they're one of the most stable form of "currency" items. The fact that its price (AND VALUE) hasn't changed for more than 6 months makes it so that just about any trader would accept it in place of 8 Keys.

Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

Doesn't matter if they were part of the drop system. They changed once they became Vintage. Thats why the r priced diff. The vint bud is a good example. And ofcourse they don't change much. They would have reached stabilization by now.

And that's why your Bill's Hat is still worth 8 Keys and your V.StockB is still 1 Ref. They've reached a stable price long ago and not much will change that. Look at it this way, the V.StockB has devalued along with metal, that's why its price is the same. If people suddenly feel the need to change its price because now it's "too cheap" then they will. But for that you need a demand from buyers WILLING to pay more than 1 Ref. In a way metal hasn't devalued, but only if you take these low tier items into consideration. You need to look at the bigger picture to understand it all.

Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

How low something is priced or valued has nothing to do with the market principles. The sharp dresser (unique) is an incredibly fast moiving item. Traded often. In fact thats the problem with u high trader. You forget that the bulk of the volume and value is still done in the low to mid range. That why people r complaining about key price.

Yes that gap is now certainly bigger than before. However you make no sense when you want to shorten that gap by cutting every items value in half. You'd be where you were 5 months ago and history would repeat itself.

Originally posted by Zemnmez:

It is a trade for an empty slot

But then TF2Outpost's mechanism kicks in, warning you that "You didn't specify an item to trade for".

Originally posted by F | CHARLIE:

If ref had devalued for that reason than u expect two things. One, is all other drop items would generally be uneffected because they r supplied at the same rate. Two, any items that are not part of the current drop system would rise in price (not value just price).

And that holds true for certain items (see Tour of Duty Tickets). About the rest of the items, some have been once part of the drop system (vintages) and people have been selling them for a couple of rec/ref for as far as they can remember.

1) Demand for them didn't suddenly rise just because the price of keys in terms of metal did, people won't suddenly pay 1 more ref for the same item just because
2) There's such a low market for them that the prices of some items might be off on backpack.tf until someone bothers to update them

About the genuines, you couldn't have possibly picked a worse example. Genuines have an ongoing tendancy to drop in price and some of them hold the value of craft hats (nobody really cares for most of them and since they're craftable at least they're useful).

The rest of your points have been addressed numerous times so I won't repeat myself.

lol TF2 trading srs bzns.

Originally posted by eddy:

You have 40 games on steam, you are not poor.

How is that relevant?

It is worth donating, trust me. Even with a one key donation your trades will get a lot more exposure and you will gain it back in no time. When I first donated $1 it helped me so much that a couple of days later I went ahead and upgraded straight to lv3 donator status. It saves you a lot of time since you don't have to bother to bump your trades and you get offers even when you're not at the comp.

If you lack experience it might seem unrealistic to you at first but then there's the idling alternative. It costs nothing and in a couple of weeks you have enough to upgrade to donator status.

Well those "poor" players could idle or simply play for ~4 weeks and get enough weapon drops to turn into a key by doing nothing. Or if they really wanted to they could trade their way up to a key in one evening.

I don't see how he was giving false information, especially that he clearly stated what he wanted in the notes. Trading can be real frustrating sometimes but of course that doesn't give you the right to act like that.

Anyway like others have already mentioned, that's not a valid report and doesn't belong here.

Because everyone should take trading 100% seriously and they should all update their prices regularly for your convenience. Ignore->move on.

Originally posted by Uranium235:

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.

That would be one scenario.

Another possibility is that it would stabilize the whole key/ref market. I'm not sure how many players buy hats from the Mann Co Store and how many of those would find it more feasable to buy metal from the Market and craft their own hats instead but as long as there are people willing to buy Ref for $0.30-0.35 Paypal, the price on the market wouldn't drop below a certain threshold. My guess is it would stabilize at around ~$0.50 (1 Key = ~4 Ref), anything below that would make it too easy for users to "cash out" their Steam wallet. Bots would automatically buy all the cheap metal that gets put up.

Of course the sheer amount of metal (1.2m Ref) and everyone rushing to sell on the Market could easily cause the whole thing to crash. It's a very risky move.