Gloves are on screen more than any other item you own. The knife goes away when you switch to a rifle. The rifle changes every round. The gloves are there all match, on both sides, in every weapon animation. That is why glove buyers care about float in a way rifle buyers never do.
The glove families
Every glove skin belongs to a model, and the model decides the shape, the material and how wear shows. Skins do not cross between models. A Sport Gloves finish exists only on Sport Gloves.
| Model | Look | Well-known finishes |
|---|---|---|
| Sport Gloves | Snug fabric gloves with a cuff and bold color blocking | Vice, Pandora’s Box, Hedge Maze, Superconductor, Omega, Amphibious, Slingshot, Nocts |
| Specialist Gloves | Tactical gloves with hard knuckles | Crimson Kimono, Fade, Marble Fade, Foundation, Emerald Web, Mogul, Tiger Strike, Field Agent |
| Driver Gloves | Thin leather with knuckle cut-outs | King Snake, Crimson Weave, Imperial Plaid, Lunar Weave, Overtake, Racing Green, Black Tie, Queen Jaguar |
| Hand Wraps | Cloth strips wound around the hands | Cobalt Skulls, Slaughter, Leather, Badlands, Overprint, Spruce DDPAT, Duct Tape, Arboreal, Giraffe |
| Moto Gloves | Padded motorcycle gloves | Spearmint, Cool Mint, Eclipse, Transport, Turtle, Polygon, Blood Pressure, Finish Line |
| Bloodhound, Hydra and Broken Fang Gloves | Heavier tactical models | Charred, Snakebite, Guerrilla, Emerald, Case Hardened, Rattler, Jade, Yellow-banded, Needle Point |
Sport Gloves are the most wanted family and price highest across the board. Specialist and Driver follow. Hand Wraps, Moto and the heavier models are the cheaper way in, with a few finishes popular enough to break that order.
Why gloves wear so visibly
A rifle skin is paint on metal, and the wear texture scratches paint off metal. A glove skin is fabric, leather or cloth, and the wear texture adds dirt, scuffing and faded print across the whole surface. It shows on the knuckles, along the seams, on the fingertips and on the cuff. Because the glove model fills a large part of the screen at close range, every bit of that is in your face.
Two things make it worse. The wear reads as grime rather than as scratches, so a mid-float glove looks dirty instead of used. And glove prints are large and bold, so any fading in a color block is easy to spot against the clean version you remember from the thumbnail.
Float bands do not mean the same thing on gloves
The bands are the same as on every other item: Factory New up to 0.07, Minimal Wear to 0.15, Field-Tested to 0.38, Well-Worn to 0.45, Battle-Scarred to 1.00. The difference is what those numbers look like on a glove.
Most glove finishes have a float floor of 0.06 and a ceiling of 0.80. That leaves a sliver for Factory New, from 0.06 to 0.07, so Factory New gloves are scarce and carry a large premium. Minimal Wear is the normal clean copy, and within it a 0.08 and a 0.14 already look different. Field-Tested is the widest band, and on gloves it covers everything from lightly used to heavily soiled. Battle-Scarred stops at 0.80, so the very dark looks you see on some rifles at the top of the scale do not exist on gloves.
Why the float matters more than on a rifle
- You never stop seeing them. A rifle skin is in view when you hold that rifle. Gloves are in view with every weapon, every grenade, every knife pull.
- The wear is spread out. On most rifles the wear mask hits edges and a few panels. On gloves it hits the whole surface, so the difference between a low Field-Tested and a high one is a dirty glove versus a very dirty glove.
- The clean copies are rare. With the floor at 0.06, there is no way to a spotless pair except paying for a Factory New one.
- There is little else to argue about. The pattern index rarely changes how a pair looks, and there is no StatTrak, no stickers and no Souvenir version. Within a finish, float is nearly the whole story of the price.
Reading a glove listing
- Read the exact float. On gloves the label is a poor guide.
- Open the inspect render and look at the back of the hand and the knuckles. That is the part in view in first person.
- Look at the fingertips and the cuff for dirt on light finishes. Vice, Superconductor and Cool Mint show soiling faster than dark finishes such as Nocts or Eclipse.
- Compare with a clean render of the same finish so you know what you are losing.
- Decide what the float is worth on this pair. A high Minimal Wear on a dark finish can look nearly clean. The same float on a pale glove will not.
On gloves, buy the float first and the finish second. A clean pair of a cheaper finish looks better on screen than a dirty pair of the finish you wanted.
A few facts that catch people out
- Gloves show on both sides. There is no separate T and CT pair.
- Gloves work with agent skins. The agent’s own gloves are replaced by yours.
- Gloves cannot take stickers, cannot be StatTrak and cannot go into a trade-up contract.
- Like any item received in a trade, a pair cannot be traded on again for seven days.
Every glove listing on PrefireSkins shows its exterior and, where the inspect data gives it, the exact float. With gloves that number is the thing to read before anything else.
