The tactical shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been around for a number of years, but it still enjoys great popularity – and not just among players. Collectors are willing to shell out huge sums for cosmetic items.
What is this skin? A player has purchased a coveted weapon skin on the Chinese version of Buff, a virtual marketplace for CS:GO and Badlanders items. For the AK-47 “Wild Lotus” skin, he paid 1,095,000 yuan, the equivalent of almost 150,000 euros.
What are the skins in CS:GO? Counter-Strike is actually a tactical shooter, but it has also created a large market for cosmetic items. The skins come from loot boxes, which can be earned. But to open it you need a key, which you have to buy.
The system with the loot boxes is controversial, but it resembles a form of gambling. To make matters worse, the items can come out of the box with different signs of wear, which affects their value: “Battle-worn” pushes the price down, while “Factory-New” increases it noticeably.
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A lot of money for 4 stickers
Now what is special about the skin? The “AK-47 Wild Lotus Skin” is already quite rare: there are said to be only about 3,000 copies worldwide. The variant purchased by the collector is also “factory new”, which brings it a value in the five-digit range.
However, this particular piece is still adorned with 4 Reason Holo stickers. These are stickers of the esports team Reason from the 2014 CS:GO Major in Katowice. Each of the pieces is worth approximately $40,000, making a total of $160,000 just for the stickers.
The collector also got a real bargain with his purchase. In the embedded tweet you can see what the good piece looks like including the stickers.
Where does all the money go?
How is this discussed? In fact, such prices are not uncommon for Counter-Strike skins. A little over 2 years ago someone paid almost $150,000 for what was then the most expensive skin in the game, also an AK-47 skin.
The most expensive item in CS:GO even costs $1.5 million. Thanks to the stickers, the “AK-47 Wild Lotus Skin” should still make it into the top 10 most expensive purchases so far (via dexerto). A lively discussion on the subject arose on Twitter.
While some users are shocked by the sum and cannot understand why someone would spend so much money on colorful pixels, others disagree. To a comment that a brand new Mercedes AMG would have been included for the sum, the answer is: “The people who buy something like that already have 10 AMGs, my friend” (via Twitter). What else are they going to spend all that money on?
After all, the flowery skin will probably not gather dust in a virtual safe: Owners often lend their pieces of jewelry to professional players so that they can show them off at larger tournaments.
The German Twitch streamer Marcel “MontanaBlack” Eris is also currently happily opening loot boxes in the hope of winning the big prize, but his new knife is unfortunately not “factory new”:
MontanaBlack has discovered Counter-Strike for itself, opens tons of loot boxes – “This knife cost me € 5,000”