Since trading in items began other people have been making money. There’s nothing wrong with that per say, however the real winners in trading, as with any kind of betting, should really be the guys providing the trading services – the bookies, or to use their company name, Valve Software.

The buy/sell mechanism remains solely a Steam solution. However, enterprising 3rd party websites provide everything from unusual hat search to item price and backpack valuations The core mechanic of buying and selling big ticket items has left the trusted hands of Valve and fallen into the funny grey claws of the internet.

The base currency for big ticket items is keys. They have a real-world cash value of $2.49 that hasn’t changed since they were first introduced. Originally in a single trade only 8 items at a time could pass from one person to another. Some sites such as TF2 Trading Post and Drunken_fool‘s SourceOP offer a service where a buyer and a seller can agree on a price and exchange goods via a trusted middle man who will hold on to items from both parties and exchange them. If we look at the case of a Strange Huntsman bow, an item valued at 22 keys, seller Andy will entrust his bow to middleman Bob just as buyer Charlie entrusts all his 22 keys. Only when Bob has all 23 items will he give Andy the keys and Charlie the bow. This works flawlessly while Bob is logged in and ready to run but it’s not without its problems. SourceOp is one of the better sites but away from it a nefarious scammer could easily create a 2nd account called Bobby and take both Andy and Charlie’s items for himself. Until the trading update which allowed for a hundreds of items what was needed was a crate that holds any number of items, displaying the contents during the trading process. We discussed just such a crate in KritzKast Episode 167 following the inclusion of the Valve Store Shipment Box.

While trading may have been solved for the 22 key problem, finally allowing them to be rid of dubious middlemen there’s a 2nd currency I haven’t mentioned yet, Metal. Metal is created when dropped weapons are crafted together. As such their existence is not the product of a cash purchase on the Mann Co. store. 18 random dropped weapons may be crafted to make 1 Refined metal and at the current exchange rate a Strange Huntsman is valued at ~55 Ref. This exchange would net Valve no further profit however if this new user-packable glass crate was available to buy at the store they would finally have a way of making money on big trades. Valve would be the bookies once more.

Lets develop the idea a little further. Instead of making it so that the glass crate could hold hundreds of items, it could be limited to 10 or less. Now a buyer would have to purchase 2 glass crates to make a 22 Key trade (2×10 +2). These aren’t normal crates. They will have no chains holding them closed. They will be filled and sealed by the trader and the receiver would have to smash them to gain access to the items. Thus they become a one-use item. Glass crates full of keys could be a new form of currency, allowing significant wealth to be stored in one backpack.

Valve, if you’re reading this, make our 20% of glass crate sales payable to [email protected].