As someone who's played Counter-Strike for over 15 years, I'm going to give you some advice: Don't open Counter-Strike: Global Offensive cases. It's simple! All you'll get is crap. And yet, and yet, somehow I still end up sticking in £20 or whatever when I get paid and unboxing multiple muddy brown MP9s worth 15p. So do as I say, not as I do.
After all you could be an outlier like this 18 year-old who, after being banned on Valorant (we're not sure what for), tried out the OG and after clocking a modest 34 hours in the game opened a case containing a Karambit blue gem knife with a 387 pattern. The important element here is the pattern. The 387 pattern is considered the #1 pattern in the game for the Karambit knife, being both incredibly rare and the bluest of blues, and depending on the condition of the weapon, could see the value go well north of $200,000. An example in slightly better condition is allegedly worth $1.5 million, and this knife is estimated to be one of only a dozen in the world.
Me? No I'm not jealous. CS:GO streamer and habitual unboxer of crates, OhnePixel, managed to grab the lucky knife owner shortly after the unboxing, and the individual seemed both happy about the knife and relatively clueless about CS:GO.
"Everyone's like freaking out right now," said the unnamed individual. "Yeah so actually I got an offer for like 150K, it sounds like a lot."
"It's too low" said Ohne immediately, "the last one that sold was well-worn [the knife's condition, also randomly assigned] and it was duped, that one sold for 118,000, yours is field-tested and not duped [...] Maybe around 200,000 in cash. You unboxed the creme de la creme in CS:GO."
Either way, it's silly money. "It's a lot," said the unboxer. "I don't really come from money. 200K… like, that'll help out my parents." As for why they ended up opening crates, the player says they got paid and basically shoved a load of money into the game: "I actually got banned on Valorant, then my friend told me CS:GO, and he was opening cases so I started doing it."
Well: there's luck, and then there's god damn son how the hell did that happen. This virtual knife somehow has the value of a house. But that's how they get you, and I am definitely not going to log on and open 10 cases because of this.
"Are you ever going to go back to Valorant?" asks OhnePixel at the end of the call.
"Probably not," laughs the lucky winner.
