A sticker craft is a skin with stickers applied to it. Some crafts sell for more than the skin and the stickers together. Most sell for less than the skin alone plus what the stickers cost before they were applied. Knowing which side of that line a craft falls on is the whole game.
How stickers work on a weapon
Most weapons have five sticker slots. In the current client you can place a sticker anywhere along the weapon and rotate it, so the old fixed positions are a starting point rather than a rule. Once a sticker is applied it belongs to that item. It cannot be peeled off and reused. The only things you can do with it are leave it, scrape it or remove it entirely, and removing destroys it.
Guns take stickers. Knives, gloves and agents do not.
Sticker wear is not skin wear
A sticker does not wear from play. Playing a thousand rounds with a stickered AK-47 leaves the stickers exactly as they were. The only thing that wears a sticker is scraping, which you do by hand in the inventory. Each scrape takes some of the sticker away, and it cannot be put back.
The sticker’s wear is stored separately from the skin’s float. A Factory New skin can carry heavily scraped stickers, and a Battle-Scarred skin can carry untouched ones. Inspect data shows both.
People scrape on purpose. A partly scraped foil or holo can reveal a different look, and some crafts are built around a specific scrape level. Most of the time, though, scraping lowers the value. An untouched sticker is what the next buyer wants to see.
Positions
Where a sticker sits decides whether you see it. In first person you see one side of the gun, and only part of that side. On most rifles the area around the receiver and the magazine faces you. Spots toward the muzzle can be hidden by the hand or by the angle. On the AWP the body under the scope is what you look at. On pistols nearly everything on the slide is visible.
A craft that puts the expensive sticker where it faces you is worth more than the same sticker on the far side. With free placement some crafts line several stickers up to build one image. Look at the inspect render, not the item icon, because the icon does not show the gun the way your screen does.
Matching sets
The crafts that hold value have a plan. The common patterns:
- Four or five of the same sticker in a row, called a 4x or 5x craft. The whole gun reads as one theme.
- Same team, several tournaments. A line of one team’s stickers from different years.
- Same tournament, matching finish. All holo, all foil or all gold from one event.
- Color matched to the skin. A red holo on a Redline, a gold foil on a Dragon Lore.
A gun with one expensive sticker and a few random cheap ones is not a craft. It is an expensive sticker that has been used up.
Why most crafts are worth less than the stickers were
Applying a sticker destroys it as a tradable item. The sticker is gone from the market and its value moves into the skin, but only if a buyer wants that exact combination. Most buyers do not. They want the skin, and they price the stickers at little or nothing.
- On the Steam Community Market, listings are grouped by item name. Stickers are visible on the listing, but the sale price tracks the plain skin. Crafts sold there usually go for close to the base price.
- Off the Market, a craft needs a buyer who wants those stickers on that skin at that float. That buyer exists for a matching set on a popular skin. He rarely exists for a random mix.
- Scraped stickers are worth less than intact ones, so any scrape lowers the ceiling further.
- Stickers applied to a worn or unpopular skin are usually stuck there for good. Nobody pays a premium to take over a craft they did not want.
When a craft adds value
There is a short list of situations where the whole is worth more than the parts.
- Old tournament stickers. Stickers from the early events, Katowice 2014 above all, cost more than most guns. A matching set of them on a suitable skin becomes a collector item, and the craft trades as a piece in its own right.
- A clean set on a flagship skin. Four or five matching holos on a low-float AK-47, M4A4 or AWP that people already want.
- One-of-a-kind combinations. A craft that has become known in the community, with a name and a history.
- Scrapes done well. A partial scrape that reveals a recognized look, on a sticker where that look is wanted.
Everything else is a personal craft. It can be fun to build and fun to use, and there is nothing wrong with that. Just do not expect the stickers back when you sell.
Price the skin. Price the stickers. If the craft would not sell for more than the skin alone, treat the stickers as spent the moment you apply them.
Buying a craft
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Sticker wear on every slot | A scrape you did not notice is money you should have kept |
| Position on the playside | A sticker you cannot see in-game is not worth paying for |
| Skin float and the sticker set together | A good set on a scratched skin loses most of its premium |
| Which event the stickers are from | The same team logo appears at many events, and the price depends on which one |
On PrefireSkins every lot is one specific item, and any stickers on it are part of that item. Check the inspect data for the sticker wear before you decide what the craft is worth to you.
