High tier skins ceiling could be getting lower

Over the years, collectors all over the world would be looking for the exceptional Counter-Strike items. Rare patterns, floats or sticker combos, but with the recent update from Valve, are these skins still worth investing in?

Should we expect the players to keep the interest on the quest to get the rare items? The quest for Valve is definetely trying to deflect the old "lootbox" system by allowing any item to be obtainable by playing the game.

Valve is giving more relevance to lower tier items

The most recent updates from Valve have given the lower tier items more relevance. Before, if you got a Covert Item, the chain of trade ups would end up there, but now the case is different.

Since you can use Covert Items to get a Knife or Gloves, it means that all of these items on the chain would be getting an increase in their pricing. Which it did! While on the other side of the balance, the gold items suffered a bit.

With this flooding of new gold items, their prices came down, but long term the tide could change. This update has just accelerated the rate of "burning" items, there were already some collections that were worth keeping due to their Coverts, like Fire Serpent or Dragon Lore, but now every skin gained relevance since it is a stepping stone for a Gold item.

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What can we take for the future then?

On all posts it has been reinforced that it is hard to predict the future because Valve is the sole governance body of the Counter-Strike Market. But these updates have been balanced for both ends of the spectrum.

A Counter-Strike Case would always have an output, but on the terminals you can end up not accepting any deal. So while a million cases could add a million items on the market, a million terminals doesn't necessarily translate into the same number of items.

On the long term and if players keep trading up items, the pool of lower tier items could reduce to a certain number where trading up contracts become more expensive and less temptive to attempt.

All of this scarcity could end up on a price increase of the gold items and also those high tier that collectors are always looking for. Still this line of thought is valid if the interest on Counter-Strike skins remain the same or, of course, increases.

I think that one of the issues from an update like this is that when you make certain things easy to obtain, people start to lose interest. With the loss of interest the value also starts to decline and the items could just be worth nothing over the long run.

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It is hard to predict what will be the trajectory, considering that Counter-Strike is still very relevant on the esports scene. For now placing your money on rare items could be risky, as the chance of getting an update that could make more attainable is very likeable.

Keeping your investment diversified will help you maintain a certain degree of security, but hey this is Counter-Strike skins, not a very studied field of investments.

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