A 0.0–1.0 wear value baked into every CS2 skin at drop. Lower = less worn = generally more valuable. Float drives the wear bucket (Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn, Battle-Scarred), but the raw float matters more than the bucket for high-tier listings.
An integer 0–1000 that determines a skin's pattern — where the texture lands on the model. Same skin + same float can be cheap or rare depending on the seed. The whole pattern-database market exists because some seeds are hugely more desirable than others.
A Case Hardened paint pattern with an unusually large, contiguous blue area on the playside (or back). Tier 1 blue gems can sell for 100–1000× a normal Case Hardened. Different weapons have different community-canon tier rankings, hosted on sites like CSBlueGem.
The community shorthand for the most desirable Marble Fade pattern: full Fire and Ice — full red + full blue, no yellow. FFI grades are sub-tier; "100% FFI" is the top.
Doppler skins ship in 1 of 7 phases (Phase 1–4, Sapphire, Ruby, Black Pearl). Steam doesn't label phase in the inventory — third-party tools (Dispattern, CSFloat) infer it from the inspect link or paint seed and show the phase next to the listing.
Crimson Web skins are tiered by how prominent the spider-web is on visible surfaces. Three webs visible = T3, four = T4, five+ = T5. Higher tier dramatically multiplies the value over a bottom-tier listing of the same float.
The Steam URL that opens an in-game preview of a specific item — `steam://...inspect/...`. Pattern databases and float-checkers parse the link to read the float, paint seed, and stickers without needing the asset in your inventory.
A skin that can't be unboxed from a case — only obtained as a weekly drop. Drop-only skins shrink in supply over time (no new opens), which can pull prices upward decoupled from market trends.
The effect a sticker's value has on the skin it's applied to. Pristine 4× holo or gold stickers can multiply a skin's price several times over; the skin itself becomes a "sticker craft." Sticker-craft tools track these and surface fair-value math.
A skin with applied stickers (often holo/gold) that drive the value above the base skin's market price. The craft is the unique combination of skin + sticker layout + scrape level.
CS2's rotating, time-limited reward track. Operations and Armory passes are essentially gachas where the reward set rotates. Armory ROI tools tell you the EV of completing a pass given current market prices.
The expected return of opening one case at current market prices, weighted by the official drop probabilities and minus Steam fees. Positive EV means the average opening makes money — rare. Negative EV is the norm; cases are negative-EV gambling for most openers.
The number of unopened cases on the Steam Market and in inventories. Cases lose supply over time as people open them. CSStonks and similar tools track supply as a leading indicator of price.
Steam takes ~13–15% combined (game fee + Steam fee) on every sale. Real "what I'll receive" is always lower than the listed price. Calculators that ignore fees overstate ROI.
Buying an item on one venue and selling on another for a profit after fees. Common pairs: Steam Market vs CSFloat, Buff163 vs DMarket. Arbitrage scanners surface live spreads net of fees.
How quickly an item can be sold near its quoted price. A Field-Tested AK Redline is liquid (sells in minutes). A high-float Karambit Doppler with a specific phase is illiquid (sells in weeks).
Fade-pattern skins (Karambit Fade, Glock Fade, etc.) are graded by the visible fade coverage on the playside. 100% fade = full coverage, no straight edge. Higher percent = exponentially higher price for the same wear.