In spite of the fact that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released in 2012, it is still really popular. Furthermore, it is the most popular game on Steam. But the answer is not that complicated. In addition to the spirit of the competition, Valve brought players the opportunity to get extremely rare weapon skins, which cost a lot of money. And an opportunity to gain money for the in-game skins made CSGO trade sites extremely popular.
However, trading is not that easy. Of course, you can find someone on a random discord server to exchange skins. But that takes much time, and there is almost no opportunity to get at least a minor profit from trading. Even more, it’s easy to be scammed if you are not cautious enough.
Was it easy to trade in the past?
Trading became extremely popular almost immediately after the Arms Deal update. It was first funny and interesting to get cases or random weapons just for playing. The values of skins were significantly different. While ugly battle-scarred knives were a true treasure, something really valuable could be sold for a couple of dollars. But later, when everybody understood the way the skin market works, these items became very popular and appreciated. Even some professional e-sports teams took part in negotiated matches for getting expensive skins.
And after realizing the perspectives of this market, many trading websites started appearing. The most popular one in 2015-2016 was CSGOLounge. However, it was also popular due to betting. But they provided the best way to find someone for trading. You could see offers of other players, add them to offer your deal. The way to measure the value of the skin was by converting their price into keys. One key is always 2.5$ worth, so that, average AK-47|Redline (Field-Tested) was equal to 2 keys.
However, Valve’s adding one week delay to the traded skins toughly hit the work of the CSGOLounge trading system. The other hit was when Valve made a stand against betting using skins, which made CSGOLounge stop for some time. Now the website is almost dead. They changed the trading system, but their bots don’t have some valuable skins.
Horrible scammers and fake trading websites
However, when people realized that there is an opportunity to make money with skins, many users decided, that they need to get in-game items whatever it costs. This way, fake websites started appearing.
Usually, they acted as a mirror of some popular websites. CSGOLounge was a bright example. Logging on the fake website wasn’t dangerous, they did not steal your account. But when you decided to send your skins to place a bet or a trade offer, you just gave them to the scammer. The scheme is still actual.
For example, CS.MONEY became a victim of such manipulations. Scammers use domains C.SMONEY or CSM.ONEY, because it is hard to recognize them. You can either lose your items by trading them to the fake bot or get your API key stolen. Stolen API-key allows scammers to manage your trade offers and steal your skins in the future.
Moreover, trading scamming is also available even without websites. Sometimes, when you place your offer on some trading website or discord server, people may add you to buy your skin for real money. They use either browser addons and social engineering in order to make people believe, that it’s safe to send a trade offer with some expensive skin, and you’ll get money after that. However, your skin will be just gone. That is why you need to be careful.
What is the best way to trade in 2021?
Trading in 2021 may seem complicated to many users. That’s not surprising at all. The fact that scammers became more and more active makes it harder to find a reliable website or community to trade your items. Nevertheless, it’s still possible to make a profit from the skins you have.
If you want to sell your skins, you don’t need to use face-to-face trading. It may be really dangerous. You need to understand that Steam Support does not help you get your skins back. That is because of cases when people abused steam support to dupe expensive items, such as M4A4|Howl, AWP|Dragon Lore, some knives. To sell skins, you better use a reliable website. Examples of such are SkinPort, CS.MONEY, SkinBaron.
However, trading skin to skin is much easier. Even some regular CSGO-oriented discord servers may help you with it. You just need to find someone who is interested in your trade offer. That would be the easiest way to find something you like, excluding the fact that more experienced traders can trick you, and deliberately lower the price of your item. But different trading add-ons and, for example, CS.MONEY will help you know the true price of it.
What websites to use for trading?
There is a huge number of websites that provide options for trading your skins. You can not only trade your skins safely but also sell them for real money.
- CS.MONEY. This trading platform is one of the most popular in CS:GO community. The main option on this website is regular trading. You can choose from a wide variety of offers on the website. These can be either regular items and users’ items, which have a higher price but may give you an opportunity to find really interesting offers. Moreover, the variety of filters allows you to simplify the process of browsing and finding desirable skins. The website is a partner of NaVi, the #1 team on the HLTV rating.
- SkinBaron. SkinBaron is a German trading website that is as popular as CS.MONEY. This website provides an opportunity to buy and sell skins for much lower prices. Buying skins is astonishingly beneficial, because you may keep about 30$ of their Steam Market price. The procedure of selling is simple either because you just have to choose the right item. SkinBaron is a regular sponsor of Anomaly, which proves the fact that the service is trustworthy.
- SkinPort. SkinPort is also a German website, which provides an opportunity to trade skins. The website is friendly for all the new players and allows them to sell skins beneficially for them. The commission of the website is only 10%. Moreover, the website automatically shows you whether the price is way too high, or low. So that, you will always know if the deal is ok.
Choosing the right website is a key to making a profit, but these 3 are equally great. They are simple, they provide the lowest commission and the best services to their users.
Using them, you can be sure, that your skins are safe.
To read more on topics like this, check out the Gaming category
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