Every skin in CS2 has a colored bar under it. That color is the rarity tier. It tells you how hard the skin is to drop, which trade-ups it can go into, and roughly where it sits on a price list. Roughly, because rarity is only one of the things that set a price.
The seven tiers
| Tier | Color | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer Grade | White | Map collections and weekly drops. The floor of the ladder. |
| Industrial Grade | Light blue | Map collections and weekly drops. |
| Mil-Spec | Blue | The lowest tier inside a weapon case. Also in collections. |
| Restricted | Purple | Cases and collections. |
| Classified | Pink | Cases and collections. |
| Covert | Red | The top skin tier in a case. The headline items. |
| Contraband | Gold | One skin only. Nothing drops at this tier. |
Knives and gloves sit outside the list. They carry a star in the name and show in gold. Inside a case they are listed as the Rare Special Item, rarer than Covert, and they cannot be made in a trade-up.
What the tier means for drops
Inside a case the odds fall steeply from tier to tier. Mil-Spec is the common result. Restricted is a lot rarer, Classified rarer still, and Covert is a small slice. The Rare Special Item is the rarest outcome of all. Each step up the ladder is several times harder to hit than the one below it.
Weekly drops after matches work in a similar way, with Consumer and Industrial Grade filling most of the results. This is why the cheapest skins in the game are all white and light blue, and why a Covert from a new case is usually at its most expensive in the first weeks, before the openings pile up.
What the tier means for trade-ups
A trade-up contract takes ten skins of one tier and returns one skin of the next tier up, drawn from the collections you put in. The ladder is the same one in the table: Consumer to Industrial, Industrial to Mil-Spec, and so on up to Classified to Covert.
- Covert is the ceiling. Ten Coverts cannot become a knife, a glove or a Contraband. The contract will not accept them.
- Souvenir items cannot go in at all.
- StatTrak inputs give a StatTrak output, and you cannot mix StatTrak with normal items.
- The output float is scaled from the average float of the inputs, so the tier of the inputs is not the only thing that matters.
This is the hidden supply line of the market. A Covert in a retired collection still gets made, ten Classifieds at a time, long after the collection stopped dropping.
What the tier means for price
Higher tier usually means higher price, but the tier sets the starting point and the market does the rest. Four things pull prices off the ladder.
- The weapon. A Covert on the AK-47 or the AWP has a deep crowd of buyers. A Covert on a shotgun or a machine gun often sells for less than a well-liked Classified on a rifle.
- The finish. A plain Restricted that looks good at Field-Tested can outsell a Classified that only works at Factory New.
- The source. A Covert from a case that is still being opened has fresh supply every day. A Covert from a collection that stopped dropping has none, except through trade-ups.
- The extras. StatTrak, a low float, a rare pattern or a sticker set can push a mid-tier skin past a bare Covert.
Rarity sets the floor. Weapon, finish and supply set the price.
So read the color as a floor, not a price tag. Two pink skins can be a long way apart, and a blue skin from the right collection can cost more than a red one from the wrong case.
Why Contraband is a one-off
Contraband was not part of the original ladder. It was created for one item, the M4A4 | Howl. The Howl shipped as a Covert in the Huntsman Weapon Case. Its artwork turned out to be taken from an artist without permission. Valve removed the skin from the case, had the wolf redrawn, and moved every existing copy to a new tier above Covert. The sticker that shared the artwork, Howling Dawn, got the same treatment.
Since then no Howl has come out of a case, no Howl can come out of a trade-up, and no other skin has been given the tier. The only supply is the copies that already existed on the day the case was changed, and it shrinks a little every time a copy ends up on a banned account. That is why the Howl prices the way it does. It is the one skin in the game with a fixed supply and no way to make more.
Other item types use different names
The colors stay the same across the game, but the words change. Stickers run from High Grade through Remarkable and Exotic to Extraordinary. Agents run from Distinguished through Exceptional and Superior to Master. If you see a purple sticker, read it as Restricted level and you will not be far off.
Before you buy
Use the tier to understand what you are looking at, then price the item on its own facts. Is it a case skin or a collection skin? Is the source still active? What is the float, the pattern, the sticker set? On PrefireSkins each lot shows its exterior and, where known, its float from inspect data, and prices are in EUR. The color tells you where a skin starts. The rest tells you where it ends up.
