Counter-Strike: Global Offensive CSGO Should you buy and hold cs:go cases in 2021?

Disclaimer

 
This is not(!) an investment consultation. I am just analysing the current market situation in order to inform other steam users. 
 
 

Data from 2017 – 2021

 
So first of all, let’s take a look on one example: 
 
 
The phoenix case 
sold for 0,07€ back in April 2019. Today, in March 2021 the price averages at 0,78€. That is a total increase of 1114%! If you calculate that down to 365 days, that is still a whopping 334% performance, which would outperform almost any other investment, even risky investments like Tesla (316%) and Bitcoin (320%). 
 
 
Of course, 
everyone is smarter afterwards. But many people, such as me, were aware of the massive underevaluation of the phoenix case back in 2019 and started investing. 
 
So if you’re not interested in calculating with %, here are some numbers: 
If you’d invested 50€ in phoenix cases two years ago, you’d now have 557€ in total. If you’d sell those on the steam market, the return would be 484€. Enough, to buy a very nice knife or almost 6 AWP Asiimov.  

 
But who buys at 0,07€? 
As you might have guessed: The higher the price, the bigger the potential loss. Most of the “case investors” already bought 4 months earlier, when the price was as low as 0,03€. This would lead to a return of 1.130€. Enough to buy 13 AWP Asiimov. 
 
 

Which cases would make sense?

 
In 2021 there are around 40 cases out there. That’s a lot, but we’ll only take a look on the ones that are under 0,10€. Those are the following:

 
The Chroma 3 will be very rare, very soon. It’s been around for 5 years. The case is still in the rare drop-rotation, but it’s going to be one of the next, to get removed from there. Because the price is leveraged and there are no ultra-special items inside, I’d rather keep the ones I have without buying new ones. 
For now, we’ll ignore all other cases for 0,07€. They already went up 133% from their original 0,03€ price. I’ll try my best to update this guide, as soon as their price drops again. 
 

 
So why wouldn’t we throw away the CS20 case, too? 
To understand that, we need to keep in our mind, that the price of a case is determined by the value of the items that it can contain. E.g. the bravo case contains very rare and expensive items, therefore it’s so expensive. 
Another reason is the droprate. If there is no supply and the demand stays the same or increases, the price inflates. 
When analysing CS20, I see two things: 

•  
  First of all, there is the classic knife. It’s a very unique, and exclusive knife. Similar to the Butterfly or the Huntsman Knife, it’s only available in one case. If you look at the other two, the price is already very high. Especially oldschool gamers will always want and buy the classic knife. Therefore value is guaranteed. Also, theAWP Wildfire (113€) is already valued above the AWP Asiimov (87€) from the Phoenix Collection. Together with the beautiful Famas Commemoration, you have two very attractrive and expensive red-skins on the go. 
•  
  Then, there’s also the rarity: Currently, there are around 300.000 cases on the market. When looking at the steam-market frontpage, you can see that this is still a huge number. In my opinion, that is the only factor justifying the low price. Because the CS20 case already went out of the drop rotation for prime players and will now only rarely be dropped to non-prime players, the number of available cases linearly declines in the next months. It is also very likely, that the CS20 case will be the next one, to go out of the drop-rotation completely, when a new case arrives in cs.

So, should you buy it? 
I won’t tell you that. What I can tell you, is that i filled up my storage unit with some CS20 already. 
 

The only cases left, are the Prisma 1 & 2:

 
 
Prisma 1 
So let us look at the drop rotation: Currently Prisma 1 is the 3rd oldest case, which makes it very unlikely to go out of the drop rotation in 2021. It could drop out in Winter 21/22, but you can’t be sure on that. 

Originally posted by Mr. Nef:

Still, looking on cases as a long term investment, we won’t care about a single year. We buy, when the price is low.

There are around 1.000.000 cases on the market, which is a lot. Back in 2017, when lots of players bought the phoenix case, there were almost 3.000.000 on the market. But that 1m nowadays is still a huge number, taking to account that way more cases are out there today. 
 
The Prisma 1 case has one expensive and one cheap red skin, both of them are not the most unique in the world. The other items are maybe pretty, but none of them is very special, too. There is no unique knife to that case. 
 
Still, I do think that a case that will be limited in the future is slightly underpriced at 5 cents and therefore think, that it’s a very stable investment and that it’ll reach at least 27 cents in two years. Enough to take the risk! 
 
Prisma 2 
… on the other hand is only one year old, as of today. It’ll be dropped to Prime-Players for a long time. Therefore, I don’t think that it has the same potential in the next two years. 
 
 

Which cases to avoid?

 
The newest operation,Broken Fang, featured a rather usual collection. Still, the price of the container is very high (0,65€).  
That is because many people think that the case won’t be dropped after the operation is over. In my eyes, that is very unlikely. 
The Fracture case, from the last operation is still being dropped very often. In the past, Valve never tried to limit a new case, so why would they do it with this one? Many people hold hundreds of Broken Fang cases in their inventory, so there will be no high demand in the near future. 
 
If you’ve accumulated lots of Broken Fang cases, why wouldn’t you be happy about the high price and sell it? 
 
 

Risk #1 | The demand stagnates

 
When investing in basically anything, you always have to take to account that there is a posibility that noone wants to buy your asset in the future. 
Take Pubg cases for example: Because of bad developement and not listening to communities, Pubg lost a big part of its loyal playerbase.

Originally posted by Mr. Nef:

Except for mobile, but who cares about mobile gaming?!

Eventhough it is very unlikely in my opinion, csgo can lose huge parts of its playerbase. That’s a low risk factor, but it can happen. 
 
The demand can also stagnate for your chosen case. Take the revolver case for example: Who cares about those ugly skins? Eventhough it is very rare, noone really likes to buy it. 
 
 

Risk #2 | The next counter-strike?

 
This is a very hot topic. Millions and millions worth of skins are currently lying in players inventories, and when Valve decides to announce a new counter-strike, their value is likely to drop for around 90-95%. The same would happen to your cases. 
How likely is it, that Valve would offer players to take their inventory over the the next cs? ~ 40%? 
How likely is it, that Valve would announce a new cs, 9 years after csgo’s release? ~ 15%? 
 
To be honest, noone outside Valve HQ knows. 
But because of this point, I would highly recommend not to invest more than 5% of your available cashflow into cs:go cases! 
 
 

Risk #3 | Government regulations

 
As we’ve seen in the past, some countries can and ban csgo case openings. The netherlands and belgium for example: www.eurogamer.net – https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-07-12-cs-go-update-blocks-players-in-netherlands-and-belgium-from-opening-loot-boxes#:~:text=A%20new%20CS%3AGO%20update,games%20or%20face%20the%20consequences. 
I’m not talking about the risk of your country banning case openings (VPN). It’s more about the risk of a huge CS:GO country, like Germany, Russia or the US banning case openings. The price of your lovely cases would drop by a huge percentage (15-35%). 
 
Just take this risk to account, when investing. 
 
 

When is the best time to sell?

 
Market timing is something you could study for years and still do it wrong. But, you can set a price limit where you are happy with the profit and then sell your cases. 
Or, you can sell 20% of your cases each time they reach a new milestone. (For example at 0,30; 0,50; 0,70…) 

 
I’ve sold a few hundred phoenix cases recently, and that’s why: 
Normally, when the demand falls the price will follow. As you can see here, the number of daily sold phoenix cases went down by a lot: 
 
 
 
 
Of course, there are other factors that keep the price where it is, but it’s a small indicator, that there are fewer people interested in phoenix cases. As long as the trendline goes up and the case stays out of the drop rotation, I’ll definetly keep most of them. But just keep those small indicators in mind. 
 
 
 

Resumé

 
I’m no investment guru or anything. I just want to inform my lovely counter-strike community, that there are some very interesting cs:go cases out there, which are still likely to increase in their price. It’s always a small gamble, but otherwise everyone would be rich and that doesn’t work. At the end you have to buy, what you’re convinced of, but maybe keep my advices in mind and don’t buy crap. 
 
Greetings. 
 
 
 

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