A rare skin for an AK-47 in the video game Counter-Strike:Global Offensive (CS:GO) just sold for $400,000, according to a streamer who facilitated the sale.
As first reported by Dexerto, CS:GO streamer zipeL reported the sale in a tweet. The skin is a blue-chrome job wrapped around an AK-47 that’s been covered in glowing blue stickers. A private collector in China purchased the skin for $400,000. As part of the same transaction, the collector also bought a knife worth around $100,00.
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The AK-47 appears to be the most expensive single CS:GO skin ever sold.
Paying $400,000 for a digital good like a CS:GO skin might seem ludicrous, but the market has been around for years and the items tend to appreciate in value. zipeL runs a website called skinbid which facilitates the sale of these rare and expensive CS:GO skins. He showed Motherboard a screenshot of cryptocurrency transactions amounting to over $400,000.
Pattern based skins in CS:GO are randomly generated. An artist creates a skin, but when a player earns or creates a skin in the game, that skin is assigned a random pattern number from 1 to 999. Each pattern number applies the skin to the item in a different variation. The $400,000 AK-47 has a Case Hardened skin and pattern 661.
Other random traits are assigned to weapons when they’re generated, including wear and tear. This particular AK-47 has minimal wear and tear, making it more attractive. But the thing that really puts the price over are its stickers. CS:GO also has stickers that carry their own values and this particular AK-47 is covered in four glowing blue “Titan Katowice 2014” stickers, a reference to an old tournament and a professional team that dominated the game before one of its top players was banned. Each one of these stickers goes for around $60,000 on the secondary market and this AK-47 has four of them.
$400,000 is an incredible amount of money for a CS:GO skin, but it’s not the most valuable. According to Dexetro, that honor belongs to a knife that’s believed to have a value of around $1.5 million, though it’s never sold for that amount. The curved blade with a “Case Hardened” skin similar to the AK-47 sold for $100,000 in 2016. Someone offered to pay more than $1.3 million for the skin last year, but the owner turned down the offer and said they wanted to hold out for more
