If you have played Team Fortress 2 recently you are probably aware that there are a wide variety of weapons, hats and other miscellaneous items for your class to use in-game. Unless you obsessively keep up with TF2 and its trading community like I do, what you may not be aware of is that some of those items are worth good chunks of change—as in real cash money. The Mann-Conomy, TF2’s in-game economy, was introduced a little over a year ago and it didn’t take long for the TF2 community to turn the in-game economy into a game itself. Some items have settled in as currency for buying or trading items. Others, due to their rarity, are worth amounts that may make some of you uncomfortable, being that they are merely a set of pixels. Let’s take a look at how some items have become worth more than the original price tag of the game and others multiple times that.

The Mann-Conomy

In early September 2010, players started receiving Mann-Co. Supply Crates in their random drops that normally only contained weapons or, on rare occasions, a hat. What are these? What do we do with them? The crate’s in-game description showed what was in the crates; a myriad of weapons, hats, customization tools or an “Exceedingly Rare Special Item!” What is that? How do we get one? On September 30th, 2010 Valve released The Mann-Conomy Update and answered all those questions. Included with the update was an in-game store called The Mann-Co.Store. The Mann-Co. Store sold many weapons and hats along with keys to open the crates. For $2.49 you could purchase a Mann-Co. Supply Crate Key and use it to open a single crate from your inventory. Let’s come back to that in a little bit.

A couple of seemingly innocent events that occurred before the Mann-Conomy even existed introduced items that would become the foundation of the Mann-Conomy. Almost a year before you could trade with other players, on November 2nd, 2009, Valve announced in a blog post that any Steam user that preordered Left 4 Dead 2 would receive Bill’s Hat in TF2. This U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Beret was worn by the character Bill in the first Left 4 Dead. People who wanted to buy Left 4 Dead 2 received 10% off the preorder and got a cool hat that can be worn by any class in TF2. That was it—at the time. About eight months later on June 10th, 2010, along with the release of TF2 for Mac OS, Valve announced in a blog post that anyone that logged into their TF2 account from a Mac between then and August 16th would receive a pair of in-game Ear Buds. Again, just a little fun miscellaneous item for any class to sport while shooting their friends.

Bill’s and Buds, as they have come to be known, were never to be given to TF2 players again. This makes them perfect in-game currency. Their limited availability set the supply. The fact that they actually looked good in the game caused players who missed out on those two events to want to trade for them. There was the demand. Simple economics (Mann-Conomics?) tells us that limited supply and high demand makes valuable items. Once trading started, the value of a Bill’s settled at around $10. A Buds was commonly traded for two Bills’, a real world value of about $20. Keys started to be traded for and then sold. They sell for less than Mann-Co. price on the aftermarket—averaging about $2.00 each.

The prices on all of these items fluctuate with each other on a regular basis, so values on high-end items are often expressed in Buds, a Bill’s Hat being half of a Buds. Currently an Ear Buds is worth around $28. In turn Bill’s are worth about $14. Now that you have a general idea of worth in-game, let’s get down to the good stuff.

And now, the good stuff

The date was August 13th, 2009. The update was The Classless Update. A hidden page emerged and was passed around to and from excited players in Steam chat and on forums. The first 11,111 people to log on and click the button on that page received an in-game item for the Soldier. The Gentle Manne’s Service Medal. Each medal was eventually numbered from one to 11,111—making them each unique. Each is worth at least one Buds, going up as the numbers get below #3000. A number under #1000 is easily worth four Buds.

There have been two instances in Team Fortress 2 history that Valve has assigned a Vintage quality to groups of items. The first time being when the Mann-Conomy was introduced—none of the affected items in this switch are rare enough to be worth more than a few dollars. The second Vintage switch was after the release of the game Total War: SHOGUN 2. The Shogun Pack was added to the game on March 10th, 2011, consisting of nine items given to TF2 players who preordered the game. These items also became craftable at that time. Just five days later, as part of an update, all of the Shogun Pack weapons that had been crafted were given Vintage quality. Two of these items were The Fan-O-War melee weapon for the Scout and The Concheror for the Soldier. The short crafting window coupled with the fact that these two particular weapons were not well received meant almost nobody crafted them. Only about 300 of each of them was made Vintage. The demand for these comes from vintage collectors. The Vintage Fan-O-War and The Vintage Choncheror are the keys to a full vintage collection. Their worth has only gone up, currently fetching two Buds each.

In April of 2010, Telltale games released Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse on Steam. To promote the game after launch, any players who purchased it in the first week of release received three TF2 in-game items; Max’s Severed Head, The Lugermorph and The Big Kill. Even though Max’s Severed Head is thought to be ugly by a lot of the TF2 community, being one of the rarer, if not rarest hats when trading was introduced drove its values pretty high. A Max Head was traded for four Buds for a long time. Just recently it has started trading for three and a half Buds (3 Buds, 1 Bill’s). When The Lugermorph was later re-released in connection with Poker Night at the Inventory all original Lugermorphs were given Vintage quality. The Big Kill and The Vintage Lugermorph have continually held their value at one Buds and one Bill’s respectively.

Most items take little effort to acquire; preorder a game, log in to Steam, combine virtual pixels. Not so for The Hat of Undeniable Wealth And Respect. It is not just a clever name, either—to receive a HOUWAR a player had to complete all 28 objectives in The Great Steam Treasure Hunt in December of 2010. This was no easy task, as the hunt spanned two weeks and over 20 games. The hat has been updated over time to include movements and particle effects—making it even more desirable. The HOUWAR commonly sells for between $360-$400, often traded for the equivalent value of Buds. (Editor’s note: Holy shit!)

Remember the “Exceedingly Rare Special Item!“ I told you about earlier? Some very intuitive players setup servers that recorded what was coming out of the crates and figured out that in any given crate you have a 1% chance of uncrating an Unusual Hat. An Unusual Hat, commonly refereed to as simply an Unusual, is a random hat that is given a random particle effect. The effects range from different colored confetti showering off the hat to sun beams shining brightly from it. Receiving an Unusual from a crate is very rare, so there is not a steady supply of any given hat or effect. Some people have documented spans of crate opening (some hundreds at a time) and never received an Unusual. Some hat/effect combos are very well liked and therefore there is a high demand for them. Here we are with supply and demand again—this time with the fact that someone can spend $200+ on keys and still not uncrate an Unusual, causing the real world price for Unusuals to skyrocket. It is never easy to put a price on an Unusual. A high demand hat, such as The Team Captain, with a high demand effect, such as Sunbeams, can and has sold for upwards of $1000 (That is indeed four digits just in case you might think that is a typo). A lower demand hat with a not-so-popular effect can possibly be worth as low as $40. There are a lot of them in-between that get bought and sold for hundreds of dollars every day.

A meta-game about a game

I hope you enjoyed learning about TF2’s rarer and more valuable items along with a bit of their history. If you haven’t opened your backpack yet, pop it open and take a peek. If your Steam profile is public, you can view your backpack with sites like TF2Items.com and TF2b.com. If your Steam profile is private, then you will need to launch Team Fortress 2 to have a look. While you’re at it, come play Team Fortress 2 with an awesome community. Happy treasure hunting.