Covert Skins Can Now Trade Up to Knives and Gloves in CS2

Introduction

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In today’s CS2 update, Valve added Retakes back as an official game mode and announced that knives and gloves can now be included in tradeups. This last part represents a major shakeup in the CS2 skins economy, so in this article we will expand on this a little bit.

What are tradeups?

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In CS2, players can exchange ten skins of the same rarity tier for one skin that’s a tier higher. The exchanged skins get destroyed in the process, and the player gets a randomly chosen skin from the case(s) or collection(s) that the exchanged skins belong to. If multiple different collections and cases were used as input skins, then a random collection gets chosen.

Up until now, it wasn’t possible to trade up to knives and gloves, but Valve has now changed that.

How to trade up to a knife

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Trading up to a knife (or gloves) is done by trading 5 Covert-tier skins in. You then get a random knife (or glove) from the collection(s) you used to trade up. Note that there’s no way to guarantee a specific knife finish or pattern.

If you trade up 5 skins from the Kilowatt case, for example, you’re guaranteed to get a Kukri knife (since that’s the only knife in that case) but the finish is randomized. You might get a Kukri Fade, or a much less valuable Safari Mesh.

The more skins from one collection you add to the tradeup, the higher the chances are of getting a knife/glove from that collection. So if you add 4 Breakout case skins to your tradeup (the Breakout case has the Butterfly Knife only) and one skin from another case, you have an 80% chance of getting a Butterfly knife.

The consequences of this decision

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Up until now, knives and gloves were relatively stable investments in the sense that they rarely lost much of their value. With today’s update, that has obviously changed. Now that they’re able to be traded up to, knives and gloves are much more common than they used to be, which lowers their prices.

On the other end, we see the prices of Covert skins skyrocket as people are buying them up to trade up to knives.

As this decision is still new, the market is obviously in a frenzy. Many people are panicking, and prices are extremely erratic. We suspect that this may be the case for a while. Many new knives are being created right now, and will be available for sale in 8 days, so we expect a new wave of price adjustments by then.

As per usual, the market will stabilize and calm down after a while, but there’s no telling when that will be since this is without a doubt one of the biggest market changes ever in Counter-Strike’s history.

Looking towards the future

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In short: no one can tell you what will happen. It’s obvious that knives and gloves will be more common, which may lower their prices. However, as tons of Covert skins are being used and bought up, the prices of these tradeup skins may rise to be so high that many people won’t even attempt a tradeup anymore, as trading up does not guarantee that you’re getting the exact knife that you want.

If that point where it gets too expensive to attempt a tradeup comes along pretty quickly, the amount of knives that are being created might be rather limited, which might reduce the price impact on knives and gloves. However, it’s still a fact that many new knives and gloves are being added to the game, so we don’t expect these items to bounce back to their pre-update prices any time soon.

The following is just theorycrafting, but common knives (i.e. knives that can be found in multiple cases) might take a comparatively larger hit than knives that are only in one or two cases. We also suspect that many high-tier and high-volume traders will make attempts to get ultra rare knives like Doppler Gem finishes, which may make those a lot more common than before.

In the long term, we wouldn’t be surprised if prices for CS2 skins in general spread out a bit more across different skin rarities and types. Knives and gloves could be much less expensive, whereas regular (Covert) skins rise in price due to their newly added value in being used as tradeup fodder.

But obviously, no one knows what will happen. This is a huge market shakeup, and it’s anyone’s guess as to what the market will look like in the (distant) future.

Conclusion

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One thing was made abundantly clear today: the CS2 skin market is not safe or reliable. Valve can make changes at any point, which can wipe out thousands of dollars in value for certain items overnight. This was already well-known (and we try to highlight this fact in every skins-related article) but today’s update further emphasizes that. The skins market can be used for investing and making money, but like crypto, it’s an incredibly volatile and risky market. Never invest money that you can’t afford to lose or that you need to survive.

As for the future: no one knows for sure what will happen to prices and the CS2 skin economy. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.