TF2 Trading Guide by Convict

Interested in making money off of a F2P game? I'm going to teach you the basics and get you started. One thing you have to keep in mind, you wont be successful overnight. You really have to work for it. It may only take you a few weeks, it may take you a few months. Here I will teach you the basics of currency, ways to get said currency, and how to get real money out of it.

Before we even start talking about how to get money or hats or items, you have to know the value of items. This is vital in your trading career. You don't want to get sharked or scammed, so you NEED to know this before you even get started.

"Clean" and "Dirty"

Items are classified as being "dirty" and "clean". Dirty means the item is uncraftable, or untradeable. Clean means the opposite, it is craftable, and tradeable. Items such as weapons, hats, and miscs get this classification. There are exceptions for items called "unusuals" that we will go into detail later on. All you need to know that is relevant right now is that a "dirty" unusual has been duped, or a marked scammer has dealt with it. Now, this doesn't mean that if it has a scammer in its trade history; it means that if the unusual is a 1 of 1, and has been duped by the scammer.
The item's classification affects the item's value. Clean is almost always higher valued over dirty items. The only exceptions are glitched items that are clean/dirty when all of the others are the opposite.

Currency and their values

There are different types of currency. Some for low-value trading, some for medium-value trading, and some for very high-value trading. Each of these items has their value in refined metal. It may seem confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy.

Refined (ref) = 1 refined metal
Reclaimed (rec) = .33 refined metal (3 reclaimed = 1 refined)
Scrap = .11 (3 scrap = 1 reclaimed) (18 scrap = 1 refined)
Clean weapon = 1/2 a scrap (2 weapons = 1 scrap)

These are used for low and medium value trading. The next items rise and fall with their pricing, so you'll have to use sites like [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] to find their prices.

Keys are tools that you have to get from the Mann Co. store or trading. You can't find them, you can't craft them. They are currently valued at about 4-4.11 ref. These are used for medium to somewhat high value trading.

Bill's hat (commonly referred to as just "bill's") is a promo that was given out to people that pre ordered Left 4 Dead, years ago. There are a limited amount of these, which is why their value is a little high for just a hat (well, it is stylish.) They are currently valued at 8 keys, unpainted. Older promos are usually pretty high in their value.

Earbuds (commonly referred to as just "buds") are a promo that were released a few years ago to people that logged on to TF2 on a Mac. They are a misc, and they emit small musical note particles. They are currently valued at around 26-28 keys. The reason for it is because there is only a limited amount of them and they have a particle effect.

Max's severed head (commonly referred to as just "max's") is a promo that was released in 2010. It is a hat, it has no particle effect. They are currently valued at about two buds. The reason for their high price is likely because of the set amount there are and how good they look. There was a mass duping of them, though each of the duped hats were cleaned by Valve. These hats were all levels 1 and 7, which is why you might see people buying max's and saying they don't want levels 1 and 7 out of ignorance.

Levels of trading and their items

Low Level
Clean Weapons - .11
Uncraftable Hats - range from .33 to 1 ref
Low-value paints - range from .11 to .66
"Cancer" Stranges - range from .11 to .22

Medium Level
"Craft" hats - 1.22 to 1.33 (These are hats that people just use for crafting)
Clean hats - 1.33 to several keys (These are good looking hats that people wear)
Genuine items - range from 1.33 to multiple keys
Tools and taunts - range from 2 ref to multiple keys
Mid level stranges - range from 1 ref to 2 keys
2011 Festives - range from 1 key to 4 keys

High Level
Promos - range from 8 keys to multiple buds
Vintage promos - range from 2 buds to 20 buds
High level stranges - range from 6 keys to multiple buds
Crate 30's - 1 bud
Low tier unusuals - range from 15 keys to 1 bud
Mid tier unusuals - range from 1.5 buds to 3 buds
High tier unusuals - range from 5 buds to 15 buds
God tier unusuals - range from 15 buds to 120 buds

How to get items

There is a drop system in TF2. This means that you get free items, just for playing the game. This is how you get started in TF2. On average you will get an item every 50 minutes. There is a cap on how many items you can get each week. After 10 hours of gameplay in one week, you will not receive any more items. With this drop system, you will obtain mostly weapons, sometimes hats, and sometimes paints.

I've got tons of weapons, how do I start trading??

To get started trading, you need to find a trade server. Just go into the server browser and filter for servers with "trade" in their name/tags. Find one with a good amount of people in it, and go in. From here, you can do multiple things. You can either craft all of your same class weapons, or you can find a scrapbanker to do it for you. Scrapbankers will give you one scrap per 2 weapons. The way they make money off of this system is by selling each of the weapons they get for 1 scrap each. You can do this too, but it's not very popular anymore due to the new bot system that [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] has introduced. After you have all this metal, you can try these methods.

Hat Banking
This method is buying craft hats for cheap, and selling them for 1-3 scrap more than you bought it for.

Ticket Banking
This is similar to hat banking, just with Tour of Duty and Squad voucher tickets.

Hat trading
This method can take some time. This involves getting a hat, and progressively trading it for other hats until you get one worth more than what you started with.

Spycrabbing
This is where I make my money. Spycrabbing is the act of setting a wager and then taunting with another person until someone does the famous "spycrab" taunt 3 times. Some people play by different rules, but the most common is that the first person to spycrab three times loses.

I've got a bunch of keys, what do I do now??

Now that you have a good amount of keys, you have a variety of choices you can make. You can either take the path that I did, which was get into unusual trading, you can stay at mid level trading, or you can become a spycrabbing extraordinaire.

Unusual trading

This is what separates the men from the boys. Unusual trading is much different than regular trading. Now you not only have to deal with a bunch of different types of hats, you now have all those hats and tons of particle effects. I'll start by listing the levels of particle effects.
This list goes from low to high.
Low tier effects

Nuts & Bolts
Green Confetti
Purple Confetti
Steaming
Orbiting Flame
Bubbles
Orbiting Planets

Mid tier effects

Smoking
Massed Flies
Circling TF2 Logo
Haunted Ghosts
Searing Plasma
Vivid Plasma
Circling Peace Sign
Stormy Storm
Blizzard

High Tier effects

Green Energy
Purple Energy
Sunbeams
Circling Heart
Scorching Flames
Burning Flames

Halloween effects
The reason I put an entirely new category for these is because their values can not accurately be put. There are is a very limited number of hats with these effects, and a lot of people don't like them.

Cauldron Bubbles
Orbiting Jack-o-Lantern
Eerie Orbiting Flame
Cloudy Moon
It's A Secret To Everybody
Knifestorm
Stormy 13th Hour
Harvest Moon

Unusual trading is different from regular trading. It takes time, and patience. If you ever need a price check on a hat, ask here or PM me.

I'm sick of trading and I want real money. What do I do??

A lot of people get sick of trading after a while. It can be a real hassle and some traders can be really rude and mean. There are a few ways to get money. You can sell all of your items for metal and get keys. You can then either sell those keys on the Steam Community Market (you'll get more there, but you can't put it on paypal) or you can sell them for paypal money. People that sell them for paypal money usually sell them for about $1.35 to $1.40. On the Community Market, they usually sell for about $2.

Sites for prices and trading

Prices - [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

Trading - [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]