Someone Spent Over $150,000 on a CS:GO Weapon Skin and I Think It's Time for a Revolution

Someone Spent Over $150,000 on a CS:GO Weapon Skin and I Think It's Time for a Revolution

Rise up, vac-action prisoners.


In an event that future historians will point to as evidence of our arrogance and decadence, a profligate gamer spent a six-figure sum on a single AK-47 skin in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Spotted by Dexerto (opens in new tab), a CS:GO player on the Chinese version of Buff - a marketplace for players to trade digital trinkets like skins and stickers - spent ¥1,095,000 (that's the Chinese yuan) on a "new factory" Wild Lotus skin embellished with four rare stickers. That's around $160,000 / £131,500.

4x Reason Holo Wild Lotus just sold on buff for 150’000€ 😳 pic.twitter.com/qv5qKvoRjv

— Lorenzo (@we3csgo) March 13, 2023

The Wild Lotus skin is rare - there are less than 3,000 - and the fact that it was "factory new" made it even rarer. CS:GO skins don't wear out with use (thankfully), but they do have a chance to fall into a state ranging from "battle scarred" to, well, "factory new". While other Wild Lotus skins sell for around $10,000 (opens in a new tab) (reasonable), the pristine state of this one has made it particularly rare and therefore particularly attractive.


Also, despite the rarity of the skin itself, it's actually the stickers that were the most valuable part. The four Reason Holo stickers from the 2014 Katowice CS:GO Major tournament skin were worth around $40,000 each. I don't want to dazzle you with my math skills, but that means the four stickers alone were worth about $160,000.


Naive that I am, I was a little taken aback by the idea of some kind of video game Marie Antoinette spending sports car money on a completely immaterial weapon skin, but this is all really normal for the CS:GO community.


While this trade is an outlier (Dxerto notes that it's probably in the top 10 most expensive skins), players spend thousands of dollars on weapon skins all the time. Heck, you could spend over $400,000 on one (opens in a new tab) right now if you want. Many collectors of rare skins will tell you, with an almost imperceptible eye roll, that $160,000 is a totally reasonable estimate (opens in new tab) for this skin in the context of the current CS:GO market.


After all, as one of these collectors said on Twitter (opens in new tab), where else are they going to spend? "The people who buy this already have 10 [Mercedes-AMGs] my man." Someone, I beg you, go get the factory new guillotine.