Counter Strike is a hugely popular first person shooter game for the PC made by Valve. It has many dedicated gamers and a relatively large pro scene. However, one of its main reasons for success was because of a money making idea Valve came up with called skins. This pixel decorations for the guns became hugely popular, and some stuff is even worth thousands of dollars!
These days, you cannot and will not be considered a decent player without having some of these items. Obviously, Valve cases are a huge scam that makes you lose your money, so we will be talking about CS:GO marketplaces where you can buy and sell skins, how they work, what percent fees they take, as well as a short review on some of the top sites. Without further ado, let us get started!
Payment Methods
So marketplaces use real money to buy and sell in-game items with. They do not directly buy or sell anything, but rather hook up buyers and sellers. Before we start talking about everything else, we should discuss what sort of payment methods these websites accept. Bitcoin is the most popular currency because it is irreversible. There is no central government or bank controlling the currency, and it is a very successful cryptocurrency. On top of this, bitcoin has very little fees, so it is the most ideal payment method.
The websites also accept debit and credit cards. These cards are standard, and everyone knows about how they work. Simply enter the required information, and voila! The money in transferred! The problem here is that often scammers or hackers who get hold of these cards try to buy stuff that is easy to resell. Skins are very easy to resell, so that is why sites often require you to verify yourself before allowing you to use this payment method.
Finally, the infamous PayPal is accepted. Everyone knows how easy it is to reverse the payments and how high fees that the greedy overlords of PayPal take. Nevertheless, it remains a global and famous brand, and still gets a lot of money and business.
How it works?
Now you know what payment methods you are allowed to use. But you are probably still wondering what you can do with this info exactly, correct? Well, it is quite simple really. Let us assume that you are a seller. You put the skins onto the CS:GO marketplace by giving them to a trade bot associated with your account. Once the site secures your skin’s, it lists them on its shop with the price you specified.
When a buy pays real cash for the skin at your price, the give you the cash minus a small percent fee. Sellers get real cash for their items instead of Valve wallet balance, and buyers get discounted stuff. The whole system is simple and genius really! The marketplace basically acts as a trusted middleman. No scammers, no bullshit, just clean, beneficial trades!
The discount you receive on the skins on these online exchanges for the many items in Counter Strike depends on how popular the stuff is. For example, keys sell for around Valve price because they are such popular trading items. The AWP Asiimov is another example of another easy to move and popular trading item. These things receive substantially less discounts than something hard to move.
Take a Stattrak Butterfly Urban Masked minimal wear as an example. This item is a low tier knife with stattrak and in minimal wear. These things usually add value to a knife, but due to the fact that the aforementioned knife is a cheap pattern, those who have the money to purchase the stattrak minimal wear knife will just purchase a better pattern knife instead. This leads to sellers offering steep discounts on the knife to move them. Generally though, for a popular but not super tradable or hard to move item, expect around a twenty percent discount from Valve prices.
Identity Verification is a huge issue with online currency trading (skins are basically currency at this point), due to identity verification problems and other various issues. People often do not want to give out their ID and other information. Marketplaces are varied on their different levels of ID requirements. Some require verifications for buyers but not sellers. Others have no verification guidelines at all. However, whatever your comfort zone is regarding IDs, there is a service for you!
CSGOshop
We will finish off this article by reviewing the three most popular exchange sites. The third most popular site is CSGOshop. I personally use this service whenever I need skins because it is simple, safe, and easy. I can often visit this site, choose my item, pay, and receive my trade offer within ten minutes. This awesome level of service is unmatched by any other legit website.
They have a really simple layout, with nothing fancy. They have a big collection of sellers that results in a variety of items available for purchase. One really cool feature here is that they display how much of a discount you are getting off the Valve price. This helps you identify the best deals. CSGOshop also offers custom cases like case opening sites, but they are individual purchases, and offer better deals.
You could almost claim they are the best “case opening” site, if they focused their marketing in that direction. Finally, they process payments through G2A Pay, which takes a small fee on each transaction (about fifty cents), but processes paypal, bitcoins, skins, debit cards, credit cards, gift cards, skrill, neteller, and more! This is my personal recommendation for buying items if you plan to spend under one hundred dollars.
Bitskins
Next, the famous bitskins should be discussed. They only accept one form of payment: Bitcoins! The famous cryptocurrency is irreversible and convenient as I mentioned earlier, and bitskins takes advantage by focusing solely on that. They take a low cut and have a huge collection of things from various sellers. If you plan to use Bitcoins to pay for your skins, be sure to use this website!
OPskins
The last marketplace is OPskins. You have probably heard of them because they are by far the most popular exchange. They are super trusted, have the biggest collection, and offer super low fees. There is simply not enough good things to say about them! It is the safest place to buy skins, they accept bitcoins without verification, but require debit and credit card users to verify their identity.
That might be one catch that will scare you off. Another thing is that it takes a while to get your account set up and learn to navigate the website. If you are a higher tier item collector or buyer, OPskins in inevitably the best place to go. If you want to buy some lower tier things, the other two exchanges might be a better option.
Thanks for reading my article on CSGO exchanges and marketplaces. I hope this article helped you, and that you enjoyed it. Be sure to be on the lookout for future articles, and I will see you next time! Good luck!
