You all probabaly noticed that buds are no longer used for pricing unusuals since the 1st of April. Every unusual got priced in keys with the value of 12 keys for each buds. For example: An unusual hat which was 2 buds or equal to 16 keys is now 24 keys. 2-3 days later earbuds went down to 5 Keys because of panic sales and today (04/04) up to 8 keys again. Many people asking me if they should invest in earbuds or rather unusuals. I'm not sure why they went back to 8 keys due to the fact that they are pretty useless now but the best choice in my opinion is to stay away from buds. Let me know what you think about all of this.
People are asking me too, and personally I would maybe buy one or two just to see what's going to happen but there's no way in hell I would invest all...or even half of what I have....nope... All I think is... R.I.P. Earbuds 10th June 2010 - 1st April 2015
The Staff members of backpack.tf (e.g. Brad Pitt). Just strange that he have like 100 buds pure in his backpack atm.
with buds being so low, and so fast on the decline, a "currency" will be dropped for its not trusted anymore. It won't ever be a currency anymore. It may go up again a bit, but I don't think it will be ever up to 10 keys again. it was a matter of time till a item that has no cost-base for its price to drop that low. Keys are stable for these are used on crates, and have a fixed price to buy from Valve. So its shelf life is: buy from valve, used in trading for x times, being used in a crate. It cannot go down much in price vs the price Valve asks for it. Buds however, where arbitrarily set on a value, and have been on the decline since start. Bills have dropped a lot and Max heads etc. Its a sign trading in TF2 is in its decline.
Keys are of course better than buds. It`s just since the Counter Strike and Dota community interact with tf2 items, things changed. They don`t care if those items go down in price since they`re not playing the game and it seems to be that buying tf2 stuff is kinda more profitable for them since tf2 has the biggest trade section. Also if people change games (e.g leaving tf2 and starting Counter Strike) they quicksell tf2 items to come faster to Counter Strike weaps and this isn`t going well for the tf2 economy.
Yes, but the question is how will you pay for a god-tier unusual now. Valve should implement something inside the trade window where you can choose the amount of an item instead of drag n' drop every single key inside the window...
I still believe backpack ruined everything. You should remove bp.tf and everything is fine again, believe me.
If I would have known I wouldn't have sold some of my unusuals.. 2 days before buds got removed I sold my scorching bonnet for 55 pure, which was my asking price AND the value on bp.tf at that time.. 3 days later it got boosted to +100 keys and Jewlander contacted me to ask what I sold it for because the price was outdated and needed an update... My sell didn't get included because now it was a quicksell which isn't really correct since the 55 pure I got was the actual value at that time. All prices got scrambled up so much it needed to cool down again. ;_; BUT it's a great thing buds got removed IMO. I WTF'd pretty hard when I saw my backpack almost double in value. Next step: Keys back to 2.33? =D
Yes and no. I don't find it right that they just get to decide whether things (i.e. earbuds) can be used as currency or not but on the other hand it's not a bad thing that this particular website can be used as referencing point. The bp.tf community is toxic as hell and has an awful history of manipulating the market to come out better, but it really seems like a kind of necessary evil to me. It's obviou that the majority of the tf2-community has something against bp.tf but still goes back to them when in need for a reference. I'm still not okay with keys bumped up that high in metal, but knowing that refineds/reclaimeds/scraps are an infinite source it somehow makes sense to me that keys eventually got bumped that high. The CS:GO community has always revolved around valuing their stuff in keys, so I really don't see a reason why tf2 can't do the same. TL;DR: It's not a bible and don't be a pricing jihadist interpreting everything too literal!
I started pricing unusuals by myself. I look at backpack.tf prices and compare different effects and their prices. People selling for outdated prices with a high potential of profit. e.g. yesterday I bought a clean secret AA, which I think is way too underrated imo. Keys probably won't go down in price because there is too many metal in circulation. And there is no reason to craft anything because the price you can buy hats / miscs is lower. Without valve changing anything on the crafting system metal will stay low (= keys become more expensive).