Suggestion: Mann Co. Supply Crate Key at 4.33–4.66 ref

Quote by Chief Shoe:" Some people posted trades of sellers at 4.33. I'm sure, however, they were under market price and bought right away. But perhaps, if more of these show up, 4.33-4.66 becomes more accurate." < so the more 4.33 links found, the more possible this might get approved

I know you don't want to see keys rise..but what do you want the price to be more..

4.44 - 4.66 or 4.33 - 4.66? Think about it..either way it will rise soon.

Sold for 4.33ref*

Why not 5?

Yes this is much more accurite IMO

http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10041257 - four ref for a key 1 hour unsold

http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10039907 - 4.33 seller

inb4 -> "king of farts"

First link not accepting any friendrequests, hid the next comment: "buying".

much better range, but it is quite far apart

and another seller i found in trade server for 4 ref: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136288351

It says it was on April 2nd....

Not sure if that applies to today.

>april 2

510

hey guys I have a ton of the most wanted currency so that mean I am manipulating.

http://backpack.tf/vote/id/513f98eeba25366418000006 1149.

I'm pretty sure you'll get warned for being sarcastic on a key suggestion again.

uh I only get warned because I was rude and being an asshole.

Ah Long, just skirting the razors edge on the rules as usual I see. here's exactly what Vincent said, to remind you and hopefully remind him:

A Distinctive Lack of Vincent: "Long, your idiot comment has gotten out of control. I'm not going to try to defend it anymore, there's no point or reason to do so. You knew your rep with key suggestions, and you just had to gave it that extra push. I'm shutting this down. Any further key suggestions from you, valid or not, will be considered trolling and will result in a ban. I'll extend this to key comments if need be."

Keep it up, hopefully he'll do the right thing and just finally ban you. You're trade banned anyway, you have no place here.

let's roll

Hey lets make key worth 7.66, why not ?! it will happend if we wont stop doing this price rising -.-

Of course my friend.

i have bought 4 keys at 4.33 ref in 2 days.

Downvote

yea...

some proof would be nice.

And that's not in the range?

Since you admitted that you found keys within my range..downvoting don't do as much

That is in the range, though...

I bought a cat with a duck once

this tells us nothing you didn't even mention which type of cat, and what color the duck was, some people.

Oh right sorry, it was such a good deals I forgot

It was an albino cat for a terminator duck, apparently he was a collector of albinos.

I've said this once, and now I'll say it again. Keys need a stable price anyway you slice it, just as USD is in the real world. 100 cents= 1 dollar, that never changes, neither should be the amount of ref used to make up a key. If keys are to remain one of the main sources of income/payment, then they should have a stable price. People may barter around that price all they want, but it should not keep on rising because of it.

"should not keep rising"

So if a bunch of people are willing to pay more for a strange festive on christmas, should that mean the price should stay the same? That's basically price manipulation.

"People may barter around that price all they want, but it should not keep rising because of it"- BiteSizeBeast. You missed the first part, so what you are doing is quote manipulation. You should have read more thoroughly. Also keys are an economic currency, so they should have a set price, but strange festives are not economic currency are they? They are items that are bought with currency.

Then why are earbuds lowering? They're currency as well.

I have no idea why. That's the exact reason that I'm getting at. Any currency item AT ALL should not have a price that is able to be changed. It is not how it should work, and is why I don't use bp.tf for keys.

spreadshit is pricing keys at 4.55 so I don't know where you get your price from. http://tf2spreadsheet.traderempire.com/

I don't use EITHER of them for pricing currency items. Also, Spreadsheet is taking bp.tf's prices for keys and using it on their's since he knows that backpack has gotten more popular. Also, seeing that the guy who sets the price is a scammer, I wouldn't be surprised to see him rising the price either.

Then what do you use? I don't know of any other pricing sites.

I price them with my knowledge now, since the prices have gotten out of control. Also, I have totally taken a break with buying/selling keys since these suggestions started, since the economy has gone to crap with them.

They lowered last year at this time as well!

The main problem being that keys have a definite USD value, while refined does not. They are ultimately two very different items.

That's not to say I don't want stabilty. I very much miss the days where I could reliably trade keys for metal, metal for keys, not needing to worry about how different and difficult it might be next week. But the 100 cents = 1 dollar does not apply to keys and metal. A cent is by very definition one hundredth of a dollar. A comparison there would be how 9 scrap = 1 refined. The relation between keys and refined do not have anything to firmly anchor to each other.

But why not? If keys are to be a thing used to price items, then they MUST have a stable price, or it wouldn't be a true economic currency. Everything should be priced in refined is what you're saying, since that has a relationship. So why not take keys out of the economy and set them aside mainly for just unboxing?

That's not something I'm saying at all. The only thing I'm saying is that the comparison of 1 dollar = 100 cents is not a valid comparison with keys and refined. It's a statement that gets tossed around a lot, but ultimately it's the equivalent of saying "1 = 100 * 0.01, and therefore keys should never change relative to refined".

How is it not? If Tf2 has an economy, then the same thing must apply. Of course, that just isn't how people think it should run for some reason...

The issue I have is that it's not consistent. If this were true devaluation of metal versus everything else it would change metal prices on everything, but it hasn't.

Most hats that were listed in refined prices before the prices started to skyrocket hover around their same prices, craft hats are still around 1,33. Other than 'consumable' item like keys, tags or paint the only other things affected are the items that were listed with a price in keys before the rise like promos and some higher tier hats and miscs.

Go check items that were being sold for a key or two before the rise. You used to buy them for the equivalent in metal (2,66 ref), now those prices have almost doubled because a key is almost double just because the price was listed in keys instead of refined before prices changed.

How did something that is no more desirable than it was 6 months ago literally double in price ONLY because someone chose to reflect it's 'value' in keys versus metal? Because consumable items are the only items actually changing in price to any degree, everything else is just collateral damage.

Seems less like inflation and more like manipulation to make consumable items a higher price.

I agree, the way the prices are being set is broke.

My personal view is that the items that have been increasing and those that haven't further supports the issue of refined devaluation. Consumables and big ticket items like unusuals are more closely tied to USD, and those are the items that have been increasing alongside keys. Hats and misc are intrinsically tied to refined through the crafting system- no matter what's happening with keys, their value ultimately comes down to a return on the gamble of smashing together two craft hats/3 refined.

The simplistic example for a hat's tie to refined value. Why aren't the value of 1.33 craft hats increasing? Because their value is supported ENTIRELY by their ability to be a cheaper method for crafting a hat than 3 refined. The vast majority of the market for them is buying them to smash together with another hat, not to keep. A hat only sells above 1.44 refined if someone is buying it for the sake of the hat alone. If the rebuild headgear recipe were to disappear, there would be no bottom for undesirable hats and they'd plummet similar to the old uncraft 99 cent bundle hats.

Anyway, this is just my own speculation from a lot of armchair thinking. There's still bigger grey areas, like stranges and strange parts. Also, certain hats and misc that managed to climb alongside keys, and then eventually ended up in a refined price. I have a couple of guesses there, but nothing I could argue particularly well.

One note further. It does appear that consumables are hitting a ceiling, yet keys are still increasing relative to refined. But alongside that, it appears that keys have been increasing in USD more recently, at least in terms of the paypal market. So it can't even be argued it's purely about metal devaluation either anymore, there are definitely other factors at work here.

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling from me :P

Interesting comments.

Some arguments that sound similar to what you're saying are that the values are changing because the items that are rising aren't in the item drop system and it's only the ones that are that remain relatively unchanged. This is supposed to prove metal devaluation.

Unfortunately it's not entirely true. Consumables like paint that are in the drop schema are rising as well for no apparent reason other than demand. This is itself seems normal but dueling games which are highly in demand trudge along and the same 0,22 to 0,33 that they've always been. Same with decal tools.

All of the points I've seen being made arguing why these rises are perfectly normal and to be expected in any complex economic system all sound very plausible until you look at them closely. That's when they start to resemble a lot of wishy-washy mumbo jumbo being used to obscure the facts that things are being artificially manipulated by a system that's easy to bend to your will, given enough effort or enough like minded people to assist, either complicitly or unwittingly.

Not to mention most game 'economies' have some instance like this in their history where an easily exploitable system was used to artificially inflate the price of in game items.

In this particular case it's the method backpack.tf uses to determine pricing. The people that this is benefiting ARE watching with keen interest. They just wait until a price is accepted and then they add a scrap to their price. Two days later, another vote is proposed, rinse and repeat. That's how we got here.

None of them are going to drop their price a scrap until people stop buying them entirely so there will NEVER be proof showing anything other than to increase the price. The issue there is that people will always be desperate enough to buy them to open crates, or add to a trade for an item they really want and not everyone has access to free flowing cash on their account so their only option is to trade for them.

EDIT: I would also add that keys are close to being inflated to the point of being useless for almost anything you could conceivably do with them other than use them as currency.

Any item that you're going to get by unboxing will most likely be worth substantially less than the key you used to get it and that disparity in value increases every time the price is bumped.

That is going to potentially cause keys to be only ever be used as a currency like high value promos are. If that becomes the case, there's literally no upper range on the 'value' of keys anymore and that should scare the crap out of not only traders but anyone even remotely interested in any aspect of the game.

The trading economy is getting to the point that it's impossible for a new player to 'trade' up to any substantial degree and that's going to turn them off of trading and possibly the game. Some established players are just at the point where they've 'had it' with the unbridled greed and they're moving on as well.

What happens when there's no one left? What are keys worth then?

If keys end up being really common then most likely both the refined cash value and the key cash value will decrease..expensive will rise if more and more players have tons of keys.

Either way, I don't see a demand in metal.

I re-iterate:

I give up on these key suggestions. People just don't know when to stop paying ridiculous amounts for these things whose USD price ISN'T CHANGING. I'm sick of keys, and I'm sick of seeing people shoot off a fortune for them. Lower the price, and watch people sell off for lower, then we lower the suggested price again, and repeat. It's the same trend as currently, only in reverse.