RAREST AND MOST EXPENSIVE SKINS IN CSGO

The most expensive CSGO skins are either extremely rare, in high demand, or with a hefty price tag from the get-go. In July of 2020, a CS:GO skin sold for more than $100.000. The weapon in question was a StatTrak M4A4 – Howl from the Huntsman collection with a wear rating of 0.003. This was a huge amount, but massive amounts of money being traded for CSGO skins aren’t all too uncommon. The most expensive CSGO skins are pretty rare, but they demand a high price. The rarest CSGO skins are treated pretty differently from the rarest skins in other games.

What was remarkable about this buy (other than the sum) was that this was a transaction that happened off of Steam, and was paid directly in cash by an unnamed Chinese collector. This kicked off a storm – people were showing off the most expensive items they’d bought or sold. Purchases exceeding $60k were brought to light – though of course, most of these claims are almost impossible to verify. However, looking across normal CSGO trading sites, the high price of skins in the game is pretty well known.

With the value of CSGO skins inflating to quite a high price, what exactly is the rarest? Since the CSGO skins can be traded between players freely, we can quantify how rare each of them is pretty well. It is part of what makes CSGO skin betting quite a big deal, it is easy enough to find how rare a skin is.

WHAT AFFECTS CSGO SKIN VALUE?

There are three factors that affect a skin’s value – the most obvious one is rarity. The rarer a skin is, the harder it is to get, and the more people will pay for it. The next is popularity – some skins are just more well-liked than others and will therefore sell quicker and for more. The third factor is the stats of the skin.

In the case of CS:GO, there are only two stats that matter; whether the weapon is a stat-track skin, and how worn it is. To a minor degree, it also matters whether weapons have stickers on them, but as those are removable, this is minor. Some limited stickers can actually add a lot of value to a. Skin. Stickers that were only available for a limited time can make the rarest CSGO skins more valuable. The most expensive CSGO skin doesn’t have a sticker, but it is very limited.

The wear and tear on the other hand can significantly impact the value of a skin. There are several states that CS:GO skins can take: Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn, and Battle-Scarred – each weapon skin is assigned a value between 0 and 1 for how worn it is – and that number classes it into one of the above-mentioned levels of wear. The more worn the skin is, the more it’s damaged, and the less the actual design is visible on the weapon. In other words, its value decreases, with very few exceptions.

RAREST CS GO SKINS

These are the rarest and most expensive CSGO skins in the game at the moment. These do change your time. However, the skins that are difficult to get hold of tend to stay difficult to get a hold of. So, the rarest skins have a habit of only going up in price. These are the rarest CSGO skins, and how some are rarer than others:

1. SOUVENIR DRAGON LORE, FACTORY NEW

Hands down the most well-known (and one of the rarest) CS:GO skin in the game, this one sells for tens of thousands of dollars in factory new conditions. The odds of receiving one from the relevant loot box is roughly 1 in 250k – in other words, it’s exceedingly rare and almost impossible to find without buying it from the shop. This is the most expensive CSGO skin to date.

2. STATTRAK™ M9 BAYONET CRIMSON WEB, FACTORY NEW

Knife skins are even rarer in CS:GO than normal gun skins – thus, they are also more expensive. It’s unusual to see any knife skin at all for less than $50 – and for pricy ones like this, you can expect to pay upwards of $8k. This one, in particular, is one of the most expensive skins in CS:GO as its quite rare – and old!

This was one of the knife skins released back in 2013. Quite a few have dropped already, but it still keeps its legacy status and hefty price tag. For some reason, knife skins have become a pretty big status symbol for the rarest CSGO skins.  They’re often the most expensive CSGO skins.

3. STATTRAK™ KARAMBIT CRIMSON WEB, FACTORY NEW

Similar in price and skin to the Bayonet, the Karambit Crimson Web also sells for around $9k in Factory New condition. As far as the rarest CS:GO skins go, this one is definitely up there – it’s particularly popular with those who favor less ‘standard’ blade designs, as this one is curved.

Due to rarity and lack of offerings, this skin usually goes for way more than the expected asking price. Some reports say several have sold for $50,000.

4. SOUVENIR AWP DRAGONLORE FN (4X TITAN HOLO), FACTORY NEW

This one of the rarest CSGO skins is another Drago Lore souvenir edition. This one varies from the one in the top spot in a few different ways. While it is marginally less rare, you still are pretty unlikely to ever get your hands on one without paying an awful lot for it.

5. M4A4 HOWL – CONTRABAND, FACTORY NEW

The aforementioned Howl wouldn’t normally sell for several hundred thousand, but it can still set you back 4 digits if you are looking for a particularly low-wear one. The red skin isn’t just rare, it’s also one of the most popular skins – because it was only available for an extremely short time. The artist that created it issued a DMCA takedown notice that removed the skin from loot boxes after only a month – only those who had already opened a box and received one got to keep it. They can neither be received by opening nor by trading up now!

Now, this is truly a rare skin. Owning one is like owning an NFT. Banning a skin from the game is one easy way to make sure it is one of the rarest. While it doesn’t quite hit the top spot of the most expensive CSGO skin, that just shows how many CSGO skins have vanished entirely from active play.

6. STATTRAK™ AK-47 FIRE SERPENT, FACTORY NEW

AK skins in general fall on the pricier side, and this one is no exception. The Fire Serpent skin was only available in boxes from an operation almost a decade ago – therefore, it’s quite rare now. That said, it sells for around $8k, due to rarity and age – and the fact that few people bought and opened these boxes at the time since they were quite pricey too.

7. IBUYPOWER STICKER

Now it may seem odd to have a sticker on a list of the most expensive skins in CS:GO, but this particular sticker can sell for several thousand dollars – it is also one that can increase the value of another weapon skin it’s been applied to.

How the iBUYPOWER branded sticker got its notoriety is unknown. There is a debate overusing it to increase skin value also ruins the original value of said skin in some scenarios. This will vary from skin to skin and sometimes a stickerless gun will become more valuable in the future.

8. SPECIALIST GLOVES CRIMSON KIMONO

Added to the game much later than the customizable weapons and knives, gloves remain some of the rarest skins in CS:GO, and ones like the Crimson Kimono will sell for upwards of $600. They are the rarest type of drop you can get from a loot box (on par with or rarer than knives) and are therefore very unlikely to drop from a box.

The price would likely be higher if more people were interested in gloves, but they are mostly a vanity/giveaway item than highly sought after.

9. GLOCK-18 FADE, FACTORY NEW

This weapon was a drop tied to a specific map – Assault. When it was removed from the game, so was the chance to get the weapon as a drop. While it isn’t as expensive as some of the other items on this list, Glock 18 Fades are extremely rare since not that many of them (at least by comparison) were ever pulled as loot.

The result? A very rare CS:GO skin, and a pretty one at that!

10. SOUVENIR MAG-7 | BULLDOZER

Popping up in famous esports tournaments as a drop, this skin can be found in versions commemorating the 2013 DreamHack, 2019 StarLadder Berlin Major and ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018. Not a lot of versions of it are available, and there are almost no factory new versions of it present on most CSGO trading sites.

It’s definitely not high on the most expensive skins in CSGO at $160.00, but it is almost impossible to find on the open market currently.

Those are the rarest CSGO skins in the game. However, they do tend to collect around a certain few weapon. Some items’ cosmetics just seem to lend themselves more to becoming very rare. If you’re looking for the most valuable CSGO skin in each category though, then these are the top ones of each:

THE MOST EXPENSIVE AK-47 SKIN

The AK is one of the most popular weapons around, but it isn’t as represented in the rarest weapons list as some of the others. The rarest AK-47 skin is probably the Fire Serpent. This skin was first brought in for Operation Bravo. Since it is a pretty old skin, it is one of the older ones currently in the game. A Minimal wear Fire Serpent is one of the ten rarest CSGO skins.

MOST EXPENSIVE AWP SKIN

The Lightning Strike is currently the most expensive AWP skin, specifically the Factory New StatTrak Lightning Strike AWP skin. This skin has regularly sold for four figures over the last few years. It was introduced in the game’s earliest weapons case, so there’s a good reason for it being so valuable.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE CSGO SKIN KNIFE

Knife skins might not be the biggest part of your gameplay, but they have become some of the rarest CSGO skins. At the moment, the most expensive knife skin in the entire game is the StatTrak M9 Bayonet in Factory New.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE AGENT

Agents in CSGO aren’t really associated with being worth a lot of money. Especially when compared with weapon skins in the game. The rarest agent however is Sir Bloody Miami Darryl. This one can be bought for around $15. This obviously doesn’t come close to the value of some of the skins in the game. However, for an agent, this is definitely one of the more expensive choices.