CS:GO Skin Quality Guide

Playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is quite a tense experience. To be really successful here, you should invest time and energy in developing various skills - as the basis, to be able to use various CS:GO guns effectively in many game situations.

Skins become more than just decoration for dedicated players. It’s a way to prove your level and express your personality in the game. In this article, you can get helpful information about the quality of skins for CS:GO weapons.

Are They not the Same?

Let’s start with the very term of quality. First, CS:GO skins were introduced in the Arms Deal Update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. They are strictly cosmetic items that change the basic appearance of in-game guns.

Since then, the community and Valve produced lots (really lots) of skins - for every taste, you know. So, the quality of skins is not about how they look like. We all are different, and it’s hard to make substantial criteria on the basis of our personal opinions.

CS:GO Quality of Skins Is Based on:

Rarity - the most valuable skins are super difficult to obtain
Presence of the StatTrak feature
Is the skin worn out or new?
Is the skin a souvenir?
Has the skin stickers and what those stickers are?
Is the skin a contraband item?

So, the overall quality makes up prestigious (just cool) skins. The high quality makes up a high price to buy CS:GO skins. And of course, it can attract attention to players with such guns - of teammates and opponents.

We’ll discuss all the items from our list further in this article. To start, let’s answer the very basic question.

CS:GO Skin Quality Chart

Skins differ from each other by their rarity, that’s the most obvious aspect of their quality. The less number of such skins has been released by Valve, the more rare and valuable they become.

The rarest skins are CS:GO knives and such items as AWP Dragon Lore. Getting them from the game is almost impossible. CS:GO case odds for other skins are much more promising.

To understand the rarity of a particular skin, pay attention to the color mark. This chart shows the rarity gradation from common to rarest:

Common - Consumer Grade, Base Grade
Uncommon - Industrial grade
Rare - Mil-Spec, High Grade
Mythical - Restricted, Remarkable
Legendary - Classified, Exotic
Ancient - Covert, Extraordinary
Exceedingly Rare - Rare Special, Gloves, Knives
Immortal - Contraband

CS:GO Souvenirs

Some skins can be obtained from watching big official esports tournaments. These items are especially valuable - you can’t get them afterward from cases or from the random drop.

Souvenirs are the same skins but with special stickers. They appear in the form of a souvenir package with only one skin inside.

CS:GO Stickers

Unique stickers prove the origins of souvenir skins. Other CS stickers do almost the same - they make up unique skins, and the value of stickers increases the value of the cosmetic item.

There are lots of stickers on DMarket. Some of them relate to some events, others - to esports teams and players. Many stickers are just beautiful pictures.

You can use many stickers for one weapon, but you can’t take them away from a skin. So be careful with them. Cheap and common stickers decrease the quality of good skins.

CS:GO quality should be support from rare and beautiful stickers on rare and beautiful skins. The final set also should be beautiful.

Some stickers can be purchased individually, but they are also available from sticker capsules, which in the same way as CS:GO weapon cases do. Stickers also have a kind of wear levels - you can scrape them off, and this action can’t be reversed.

CS:GO Stickers can be:

High-Grade (Normal)
Remarkable (Hologram)
Exotic (Foil)
Extraordinary (Foil, souvenirs)
Contraband (discontinued)

Sell a Contraband Item on the Market

Time after time, the developers of CS:GO remove some skins from cases and the random drop. Such items become available only on marketplaces and they are called Contraband items.

These are very rare and valuable.

Such situations happen, for example, when someone’s artwork somehow appears on a skin. Like with the skins M4A4 | Howl and the sticker Howling Dawn, which were discontinued after a plagiarism accusation.

Some players try to make collections of different items with the same pattern. Like Asiimov Skins that are available for an AK-47, P90, AWP, M4A4, and P250. For someone, getting another item in such a series is more important than following any quality standards.

Quality of CS:GO skins is based on many aspects. The primary among them is whether you like it or not. Do you feel the skin would be amazing in your game? Try and get it - this is the best proof of the quality.

Trade on the go - install the mobile app of DMarket from Google Play or App Store. Never miss great prices and unique skins. The best CS:GO, Dota 2, Rust and TF2 marketplace is always at hand!

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