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Monday, February 13, 2012

To Craft or to Uncraftable. That is the question.

A question from MrDrPsychopath came in that we want to address:

"Hey, I have a question. Could you guys release more information on noncraftable stuff. I am really lost without you guy's prices, so not having noncrafts there makes me a bit lost sometimes. Also, having a guide that explains how paints effect the prices. I know how paints work on Bill's, but that's about it. Cause I have a noncraft mutton chops and a noncraft stereoscopic shades, and I have no idea what to sell them for."

As far as the sheet goes we will look into adding more of the noncraftable (dirty) prices.  In general most items that are noncraftable or dirty sell for about half of their clean counterparts.   Why?  It's mostly due to cosmetics especially for higher value items that aren't likely to be crafted.  Where craft hats are concerned it changes slightly.  Most dirty hats sell between 1 and 2 reclaimed.  For example, a Dead Cone craftable hat will often go for 1.33 refined.  However its dirty version will trade for 1 reclaimed (1/4 the price) because it is not a desirable hat.    This disparity is likely due to the function of hat crafting and not on the cosmetic value.

Someone mentioned crafting non-craftable hats in order to try and get a higher value non-craftable hat for a profit.  Our response to this is, whatever makes you happy but you aren't going to pay off your student loans with that strategy.

With paints, when you know how a painted Bills hat affects value then you pretty much know everything you need to.  Most hats with a nice paint don't influence the price in direct proportion to the cost of the paint unless its a Bills.  Cheap hats will not increase in value much if at all when painted, even a "premium" paint.  White paint on a Flipped Trilby is not seen as a 2 key bonus to the price (in fact it puts into question the sanity of the one who painted it white).  There is typically no change in the price at all unless the buyer really wants that paint.

There are some exceptions like Essential Accessories which when painted are often sold for more than unpainted versions.  Some medic hats are preferably white, such as the Tyrolean, but again like the Scout socks this will not inflate the price by that of the paint which is currently around 2 keys.  Generally speaking if you want a particular hat and it has a nice paint on it that you like you may willing to pay more for it, in proportion to the cost of the hat itself.

9 comments:

  1. Anyone able to see the actual spreadsheet? Something is broken for me as all I can see is the key sheet and the unusual hat guide.

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  2. Also, I find that some items are missing in the list. Just yesterday I was trying to find the Cow Mangler 5000 and it returned with no results.

    Much like MrDrPsychopath, I rely on your prices a lot!

    Thanks,
    Derpingson

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  3. nvm, my browser protection was blocking a google javascript, now its working again ^^

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  4. Zesus i have the same problem. Could you explain me how you solved it.

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  5. Derpingson: Thanks! The Cow Mangler and other standard, unique quality weapons we don't price until there is a value higher than a scrap. If a weapon is made strange/genuine/vintage and its value rises then we will include it in the sheet. Otherwise, most weapons will sell for a scrap to someone who wants it.

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  6. Sure, I am using Avira Internet Security 2012 and I had to add http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js to the whitelist of the browser protection as the script was detected as malware. That did the trick for me. Good luck.

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  7. I IS TEH FAMOUSES :). But anyways, thanks for addressing this issue, it helped quite a bit. I have another question though: What do special level vintages go for? I recentely aquired a level 88 vintage huntsman, a level 13 vintage kritzkrieg, and a level 7 vintage KGB. I bought those plus 3 other different leveled vintages, plus two normal leveled vintages all for a key, so I need to know what to sell for and if I bought them for a good deal :)

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  8. Thank you so much. It worked perfectly.

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  9. There are only 10 uncraftable Dead Cones in the game, this is unaccurate http://stats.teamfortress.org/item/435/The_Dead_Cone

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