Until the 4th on January, keys had been on a unstoppable rise. Their price was going up by a rec per week. The value was skyrocketing. The value was rising so much that people panicked. People thought keys were just to expensive, and person by person, people stopped buying them. No one wanted to buy keys for nearly 20 refined. Therefore, all the sellers had keys, but no buyers. Very quickly, sellers panicked, and started to sell keys for cheap. When people saw that these keys were dropping so fast, they panicked too, selling their keys. Eventually, keys became 10 ref, but instantly shot back to 13. Why? Because panicked sellers sold for 10, until there were no more panicked sellers.

Finally, keys settled at around 13 refined.

What does this mean for the future of keys?

Keys will continue to rise, but on a slower trend, a trend similar from 2012-2014. If there is a fast rise in keys, expect a drop like this again.

You are on a server, and the day is going slow, no one will trade with you.

Ever had that experience? You probably have. Heres how to stop it.

First of all, heres a easy trick. Go to the dev console and type bind m "say Selling Hat of Cards for 1.33 Refined! Trade Me!"
What this will do is that whenever you press (m) you will automatically type that in the server chat, making posting advertisements easier.

Anyways, you will want to CLEARLY state what you are selling. Do not say that you are selling a spy hat, instead say that you are selling a Hat of Cards. Same thing applies to prices, state your price in the message, that will attract more buyers. Spell everything 100% correctly, no one wants to trade with someone that doesn't speak proper english. Keep it short, no one wants to read your 10 paragraph trade, people want to see what you are trading as fast as they can.

Whenever a new update comes out, there are no set prices on items. This makes trading incredibly risky. That hat you just bought for 2 ref could be a key, or a scrap. No one really knows the prices yet. You can get a very brief understanding of the prices by looking at what people are selling for.

More risk = More reward

Whenever a new update comes out, this is about the timetable for the update's prices:

First 15 mins
Insanity, new hats are selling for many many keys, tons of buyers. It's a sellers dream. This is the time for MAJOR profit.

First hour
Hats are slowly getting prices, but there are still lots of buyers and sellers, prices are half established

First day
Prices are 99% established

1 Week after update
All hype has settled, the hats are sold/bought as regular cosmetics

Hey guys, sorry for not posting in a while, but I'm back!

The keys fell because of bread boxes and audition reels. Then people realized they fell one scrap and freaked out and tried to sell all their keys. This led the market to be flooded with keys, and people trying to sell them ASAP. They kept falling because more people got freaked out and continued to sell them cheaper and cheaper. Eventually all these scared-sellers will have sold all their keys, and there will be hardly any keys on the market. Then, there will be a huge surge of demand for keys, because there are not enough on the market, and then they will continue to rise and rise.

This is a paragraph I wrote a while back when bread boxes came out and keys were falling in price.

Keys are rising not because they are going up in price, but because refined is falling. Do you know how many people there are playing TF2? Lots. Lots of people means lots of drops. Lots of drops means lots of crafting which ultimantly ends up as metal. There is a never-ending supply of refined. The more there is, the more people have to spend on items. The more people have to spend leads to sellers charging more per key. This is why they rise. They fall because people are using refined, so there is less in the market/ less to spend. This can be seen when bread boxes came out and everyone crafted their refined.

Whew! Hope that covered this topic!

Painted items usually find a way to anchor themselves to your backpack. In other words, they are extremely tough sells. They are hard to sell because its rare for someone to like both the hat and paint. That being said, there are easier paints to sell.

Good Paints to sell:
A Bitter Taste of Defeat and Lime
Distinctive Lack of Hue
Extrordanary Abundance of Tinge
Pink As Hell
Australium Gold

Though, for most paints under 1 ref, the seller normally does not charge extra due to the extremely low cost of the paint.

When selling a painted hat I use this algorithm: Hats Value + 1/2 Paint's value. If you can, never apply paint to a hat for reselling, you will lose value.