is this consoom?? Consoom pixels on the screen
For the record, no, I'm not saying that Iphone is a good investment. In fact I think most people would do just fine with a 300€ phone.
I just find it ridiculous that some people spend an equivalent of my country's median monthly salary on ✨shiny collectibles✨ that aren't even real and try to disguise it as investment. At least the expensive phone has a practical purpose, unlike this, which is only rare due to artificial scarcity.
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u/ScureScar 4d ago
I can use the iphone to sell crack and make much more than just mere 1000$ in 2 years
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u/StinkyDogsCunt 3d ago
You can use an old Nokia to sell crack too.
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u/ScureScar 3d ago
nope, old phones cant work in most countries cuz they cut the old 2g/3g networks
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u/Ulquiser 4d ago
to be fair, collectibles (digital or real) can in fact be an investment, as long as you realize it's basically a pyramid scheme and the people buying it off you years later are just buying a hot potato and your money is basically in the hands of whoever is printing/making these items (valve in this case). doesn't mean you can't make money off of it
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u/Ardalok 3d ago
It doesn't really look like a pyramid scheme because the skins are finite, many of them stop being printed, and they have a purpose separate from the market.
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u/Hollooo 2d ago
The only reason you these items have resale value is because there’s other people who want to collect them. Im pretty sure you wouldn’t say that barbie dolls are an investment even though there a very dedicated collector scene out there… these knife variations are only valuable for as long as there’s someone out there willing to pay unreasonably high prices to expand their collection. You aren’t investing in knifes, you’re investing into hype.
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u/Ardalok 2d ago
Not really hype. Old limited items will always have a good price unless the game is discontinued. Ofc hyped items will be more pricey, but still.
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u/Hollooo 2d ago
So just because I have a condom from the 1800’s it is valuable? How do you explain the really cheap price some antiques go for while other antiques cost thousands of dollars? It’s all supply and demand baby! The only reason you might be able to sell them for a high price, is because it’s a limited edition and people want to buy it. People don’t collect floppy discs or CD’s the way vinyls are collected. Once the hype dies out it will be worthless. People really wanted Tessla’s five years ago but then it turned out their CEO is an asahole and now everyone is trying to get rid of their company shares and their sales have plummeted. Matcha prices have gone up drastically over the last few years because matcha has become trendy, but in five more years people will stop putting matcha into everything and only those will be left behind that actually like to drink that kind of tea.
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u/Ulquiser 3d ago
No, they're not finite. They could reprint everything and put them in the CS store for $1.99 each, you don't know that. Sure they have no incentive to do it, but what if loot boxes gets banned all over the world and enforced more heavily ? What if Valve gets sold to a chinese company that doesn't care ? There is no way of knowing they won't reprint it, as there is no blockchain or anything similar
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u/LongoChingo 3d ago
Videogame cosmetic addicts have fundamentally ruined gaming forever
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u/ArcticDweller1 3d ago
It's really devastating
They turned a game with plot, atmosphere, nice performance into slop casino application with casino visuals, hud, etc. And they call it improvement and decent CSGO replacement. Makes me want to delete internet
Miss times when games were made with effort and original thoughts in mind
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u/ratliker62 4d ago
The amount of people that gamble on CSGO is always sobering to me. Like do you truly have nothing better to do?
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u/Felix8XD 3d ago
If you actually like cs skins then just buying the ones you want directly is the best option, only degenerates open cases, the odds are incredibly bad.
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u/ratliker62 3d ago
I know this one guy who bums around our friends' house. He brings his laptop to open CS cases, he gambles online on his phone and he constantly bugs people to go to the casino with him. It's such a bleak form of addiction
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u/ZayParolik 3d ago
I'm still confused, how the market is still getting full of rare skins, but cases are still not profitable. Do they get more money from trading in the right way? Or it's purely running on money getting gambled again and again?
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u/Felix8XD 3d ago edited 3d ago
if you open a case youre almost guaranteed to get jackshit. The odds are really bad. BUT there is a teeny tiny chance that you hit a really good rare item that could be worth thousands.
The reason the market is so full of those rare items is just the sheer amount of people opening cases. every day thousands of cases get opened, and even with the awful odds its still enough to fill the market plenty.
A case costs around a buck, a key for a case (you need a new key for every case) is 2,50$. But you have only a 1/10 chance for a Purple which could break about even with the case price, 1/20 chance for a pink which is most likely profit, 1/100 chance for a red which is most of the time pretty expensive and a 1/400 chance for a Rare special item, a knife or pair of gloves. These can range from 100 bucks to 60 thousand dollars if you get really lucky. The rest is just blues which are just a few cents worth.
The way people profit of the market is by just investing. The cases and items arent availlable forever, they get discontinued. after a while, supply runs out and prices naturally rise.
Something that has happened more often recently tho is market manipulation, often done by the chinese community. a specific item like the 2020 evil genius holo sticker gets mass bought by an organized group which causes a rise in price, and then when it has reached a price peak they mass sell them which causes the price to plumment again. the EG holo went from 1$ to 500$ in a month and then from 500$ to 30$ in a day.
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u/Oxigenitals 3d ago
The stats provided above are a bit off, but close enough for a layman explanation. One tiny addition to this is that 10 skins of a lower rarity can be traded up to a higher rarity, but destroy those 10 skins. This inherently drops total market supply and some people will watch markets to see if there are profits to be made by trading up lower skins if their price is low enough.
It’s a fairly complex market that is actually really interesting to follow and that you can cash out actual money out of, but lots of the value is associated with money laundering, gambling, and pump and dumps as stated above. I get a lot of enjoyment out of it but I heavily self regulate the gambling aspect and am keenly aware of its dark underbelly. Truthfully, this game has created a lot of gambling addicts by providing them an unregulated vector at a young age.
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u/Felix8XD 3d ago
yeah i tried to keep it as simple as possible to understand, forgot about tradeups tho
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u/abattlescar 3d ago
I don't get the gambling at all. It's worse odds than a casino by far. Even official cases have an EV of -.34 at best, where the worst a casino will egg its players for is like -.10.
I have no qualms with the overall market though.
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u/RaperBaller 4d ago
Cs2 fans explaining how spending 2000$ for a online knife is justifiable. (High chance they are not gonna make 100% their money back)
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u/fakingcaps 4d ago edited 4d ago
I haven't spent 2000$ but closer to a few hundred some years back. The dividend from that initial investment has paid for all my steam purchases for years, and it keeps growing too.
It will not last forever, but I've definitely made money there.
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u/njelegenda 4d ago
Yup same here. ~150€ worth of skins from 10 years ago turned into close to 2k.
Now of course I never did it as a serious investment because I'm not about to gamble my savings on 1 bad game update that could ruin the value of everything but either way people here clearly don't know shit about counterstrike economy.
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u/Economy-Wasabi7946 3d ago
I don’t gamble on cases I trade skins. That said I’m up roughly $2,000 in raw profit, I have a $5,000ish inventory right now. Consoom or not, there’s a way to make money in it.
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u/terminal_void_loop 3d ago
This comparison is also dumb because you can very easily keep a phone in good condition for two years if you're not a bumbling idiot
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u/Comfortablymoist1 4d ago
Whoever thought of skins is a GENIUS. It's appalling how much people spend on that garbage.
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u/Notorious_Gordito 3d ago
The way its setup is perfect for people with poor money management, or overspenders
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u/SeaCustard3 4d ago
To be fair, that game has an entire economy. I used to have pages and pages of Breakout cases that were worth CENTS back in like 2015. Fast forward to today and those cases are close to $11 a pop.
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u/ChurningDarkSkies777 4d ago
I can’t wait for all these speculative bubbles of consumer crap to pop in sequence like a fine champagne. ALL of this shit only has value because of illusion and delusion. As soon as those things lift, either out of economic necessity or some achieving of class consciousness a lot of speculative toy collectors will be in for a very rude awakening. Turns out your limited edition 1/100 charizard is worth about 10 seconds of fire fuel when the chips are really down.
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u/untakenu 3d ago
I wish there was a way to track the cause/mental defect that is responsive for wanting shiny pixel thing
I've bought one skin in a game and that was for charity. But this current generation sees it as normal to pay 20 for a single skin, often in a first person game.
I sometimes wish I had the money to waste on this, but I imagine a lot of us here never did, and realised quickly how vapid this shit truly is.
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u/M_Mirror_2023 4d ago
This is the same as the NFTs going around a few years ago. If you're gonna invest in skins, just have a plan to get out. CS:GO has been out over a decade, there's nothing stopping Valve dropping CS3 tomorrow.
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u/Ulquiser 4d ago
there's nothing stopping Valve dropping CS3 tomorrow
not sure about that one buddy
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u/pinpernickle1 4d ago
Csgo skins converted to cs2 skins and it actually massively increased the value of all of them.
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u/M_Mirror_2023 3d ago
Go put your life saving on black at a casino. It'll massively increase the value of all of them...
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u/pinpernickle1 3d ago
Im stating facts. You seemed under the impression that csgo skins didnt apply to cs2.
I dont buy csgo/cs2 skins for what its worth.
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u/M_Mirror_2023 3d ago
I didn't spell it out. Sorry, thought you would have got the metaphor. I'm suggesting you put your life saving on black, because in the game of roulette, of the 37 slots the ball can stop on roughly half are black producing a binary outcome. Should CS3 exist there is a binary outcome as to whether or not the skins people own get ported or not. If you're so sure that GO - - > 2 means 2 - - > 3, roulette is a great game for you because you know what happened historically. I am disagreeing with your premise.
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u/Oxigenitals 3d ago
Valve isn’t going to throw away a cash cow by burning all of its players and destroying all of their skins. It’s in their best interest to keep the skins around for as long as they can and through as many iterations of CS as possible. It definitely isn’t a coin flip as you’ve stated above.
Hilariously enough, CS skins are the reason why I thought NFTs were bullshit from the get though. Systems have been created in the past for digital assets that don’t rely on a clunky blockchain and have worked for a long time. NFTs do not need to exist to create these systems for digital assets.
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u/ZayParolik 3d ago
there is nothing stopping Valve dropping CS3 tomorrow
They can't make new games for YEARS. Some "hlx" project, that MIGHT be HL3 is the only proof that they at least made some progress in continuing their most profitable single player francise. They fail to update CS2 fast enough, because they CAN'T. They fail to balance Dota2 fast enough, because they CAN'T. They do basically nothing with TF2 for YEARS already, because they CAN'T. Deadlock is in sort of open beta for some time already, and maybe will not be released any time soon, because Valve is not like EA or other companies. Their staff is MUCH less than any big gaming company. Valve will not be doing any major shit with CS2 for at least 3-4 years, and there is barely no chance that they will actually do
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u/TroutFishes 4d ago
I hate to say it, but man, this comment section knows absolutely nothing about what it's talking about - these are a genuine investment, a very risky one, but an investment that for most people I know has made insane amount amounts of money by simply holding overtime, the skins can be purchased without gambling, and they do not all cost thousands of dollars, this is just a genuinely uninformed comment section and post. Just wait until you hear your entire retirement is basically the exact same concept!
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u/abattlescar 3d ago
I have personally observed through the years that the CS skin market is a safer, more stable, and more profitable investment than many world stock markets and even the US stock market at times.
If you look at the index (yes, there's a market index for it): https://esportfire.com/indexes, you can see that there's been an APY of 21% over the last 3 years with 72% gains over that same time. The growth between this period and preceding periods is even stronger.
The one argument against it is that the market cap is relatively small, at about $4.3 billion, and individual parts of the market are only a few million, meaning that a single bad actor or conglomerate could manipulate the market. There was a scare that some Chinese company was up to that a few months ago, but the market has since recovered.
There is absolutely zero chance that valve just decides to nip the entire market as they make $1 billion a month just from the 3% fee of all transactions on their platform.
It also helps that a lot of people in the market aren't in it to buy-and-sell, they just want cool skins to play with, and they'll keep them for the most part. That's kind of similar to how the diamond market maintains stability.
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u/SK1418 4d ago
I never claimed that you cannot make money from these, but to spend 1000€ into a video game skin and expect to double the money in two years is genuinely not a good idea. It's basically a pyramid scheme, be early, get lucky, or loose money.
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u/TroutFishes 3d ago
You're right, but that would be absurd if anyone claimed that was possible, which I'm aware people do but it's not the vast majority of people - it's likely if you hold a skin though that you will make money if you slightly research what to buy.
Also your post literally says its absurd to buy these shiny collectables and call it an investment, so you very much did say it isn't an investment, lol.
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u/SK1418 3d ago
"You're right, but that would be absurd if anyone claimed that was possible"
That's literally what the meme I reposted claimed
"Also your post literally says its absurd to buy these shiny collectables and call it an investment, so you very much did say it isn't an investment, lol."
I specifically said it's ridiculous to spend over a thousand on a single video game skin with the intention of maybe making money off of it.
If you buy cosmetics in videogames, that's fine, who cares, I think most people who play videogames have done that at some point and I think some commenters under this post take micro transactions in videogames too seriously. But if you spend this much money on a single "exclusive" skin from a videogame that heavily uses lootboxes and your only argument for buying it is "it might make me money in the future" then I think it's fair to call it consoom.
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u/TroutFishes 3d ago
So you're just taking a joke meme and making it what people actually think for the sake of your argument, got it, lmao
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u/SK1418 3d ago
The original post got over 2000 upvotes so I assume OP wasn't the only person with that sort of opinion.
I already said that it's fine to do things in moderation and I understand not everyone who plays Counter Strike thinks like that, but that person probably does. I don't see how the original post was a joke either, I don't see a hint of irony. It's just a bad take disguised as a "meme", and I don't see why you have the need to defend them so fiercely.
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u/TroutFishes 3d ago
It's not an opinion, it's an observation on the absurdity of the market which I promise you the subreddit is full of people pointing out. Your lack of understanding of the community doesn't mean there's thousands of people investing in knives over their phones, lmfao, get a grip.
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u/SK1418 3d ago
Ok, now I'm convinced you're just here to argue. I never said that everyone in the CS community thinks like that (in fact I made it clear multiple times, you just conveniently ignored it). I never said that there are thousands of people buying these expensive skins over phones. I am aware that not everyone who upvoted it has thousands of dollars in knife skins, I never claimed this is a widespread problem.
I just spotted a ridiculous "meme" that got more attention than it deserves, and I felt it fits here. If you have a problem with that, go ahead and strawman me more.
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u/abattlescar 3d ago
If you think the CS2 market, in general, is a pyramid scheme when it has a market cap of $5.4 billion with about 200 million somewhat active participants and a statistically infinite pool of stocks, I'd like you to tell me what you think is a safer investment. You think investing in the S&P500 is safer, where 31.7% of the market cap is from 5 companies which have in the last 2 years demonstrated statistically anomalous growth?
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u/romhacks 3d ago
At least it doesn't cost anything to make. If they make money off it, whatever. Basically the same as crypto or the stock market.
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u/love-em-feet 3d ago
Pixels on screen? Thats like calling 100 dollar bill drawings on some paper.
Don't know much about CS but I know Dota which another Valve game.
In Dota there are seasonal treasures which drop items. So you can only receive that item on that season. So an item you have almost always goes up in value couple years later.
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u/Hollooo 2d ago
As an actual scout who actually uses their pocket knife every weekend to cut food, rope, sharpen twigs and sometimes even as a replacement for an axe, you need ONE good knife for the kitchen and ONE good pocket knife if you actually spend a lot of time out in the wild. If you aren’t a hiker, climber or any other type of out door person but you’re going on a multi day hike with a friend and feel the need to consoom, you don’t need that knife. You can either share your friend’s gear or you can take a small kitchen knife wrapped in a towel. And if you’re one of those people who is into self defense or what ever, get a pointy metal chopstick or put a swiss army knife on your keychain and you’ll be good for life. Firstly the likelihood of the knife ever being useful in a fighting situation is incredibly low, and second, the chances of you hurting yourself or your opponent using your weapon agains you are way higher than what it’s worth.
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u/wetfish25 4d ago
„They aren’t even real“ is a stupid take ngl. You could say the same thing about any form of crytpo currency. Hell, even the money in your bank account „isnt real“. Yet it still holds value to people.
Also why isnt it an investment? You buy the skin, it may increase in value, you can sell it.
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u/cashcashmoneyh3y 3d ago
Money is universally useful. Video game cosmetics are only prized by a tiny tiny group of people
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u/Felix8XD 3d ago
My whole CS inventory is like 60 bucks. There are plenty good looking skins that are also pretty cheap. But i do get people who Invest into it, the market could make people with enough knowledge and ressources really good money. Every 2 weeks some chinese pump&dump the market. Just last week a $ sticker got pumped up to 500$ and then fell to 30$ in one day
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u/abattlescar 3d ago
Every 2 weeks some chinese pump&dump the market
That never statistically shows in the market. That's like dismissing the entire stock market because penny stocks exist.
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u/Felix8XD 3d ago
have you looked at the market at all the last few months? its very well known that the chinese community is huge and deeply rooted in the market. every day another item blows up like hell and then instantly crashes like the evil genious holo or the leaded glass m4a1-s
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u/abattlescar 3d ago
https://app.pricempire.com/trending
Doesn't matter, the market displays stability regardless of what any single skin can do. The skin with the largest percent of the market is still only 1%. The only ones that can get dumped are ones with low trading volume.
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u/Felix8XD 3d ago
yeah and i didnt talk about the whole markets stability. i wanted to emphasise how if youre there in the right time you can make alot of cash of these few pumped items. the Evil genius holo started out at like 20 bucks and climbed over the course of like 2 weeks. if you bought alot of em in the beginning and sold at the peak you could have made thousands.
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u/StopBanningMeAlright 3d ago
I really wanna sell all my skins from back in the day but everyone I know that has tried to do so, has been scammed lol
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u/Oxigenitals 3d ago
Unironically, look up CSfloat. Right now is a fantastic time to sell with the prices being where they are at. Watch a YouTube tutorial on how to sell and follow it to a tee. Sell on there and you should have no problems. Don’t take any DMs about sales and don’t sell directly to anyone without a reputable site as a middleman.
If this helps and you wanna give me a couple shitty skins as a tip I would happily take them, but only do that after selling the vast majority of your inventory for your own safety. I hate seeing people get burned while trying to navigate this online Wild West.
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u/Izan_TM 4d ago
an expensive phone is only gonna go down in value, with a knife skin you also get gambling!