How we compute prices
Every number on Skinvesting comes from marketplace listings we observed ourselves. This page explains, in plain language, where the data comes from, how a price becomes the price you see, how changes and the SKINX index are calculated, and what we deliberately do not show.
Where prices come from
We poll the public price feeds of the marketplaces listed on the site every few minutes (between 5 and 30 minutes depending on the source), either directly or through a licensed market-data aggregator. Each poll yields, for every item a marketplace lists, its lowest asking price and, where the marketplace reports it, the number of listings. Every observation is stored with its timestamp; nothing is overwritten. An item's price on a marketplace is always the cheapest live ask for that exact item — wear, StatTrak™ and Souvenir variants are separate items. Steam Community Market prices include Steam's buyer fee and cannot be cashed out, which the comparison table notes.
Currency
All prices are shown in euros. Marketplaces that quote in US dollars or other currencies are converted at the European Central Bank's daily reference rate on the day of the observation. Listings that would round to €0.00 are not stored.
The headline price
The headline price of an item is the cheapest ask among the marketplaces that reported the item within the last 24 hours. Offers older than that are treated as gone. The “Lowest price” tag in the comparison table is decided by price alone; a sponsored row shows its real price and real stock, and only earns the tag when it is genuinely the cheapest. Listing counts are summed over the marketplaces that report stock. Where a marketplace publishes no stock information, we show a dash rather than a guess.
Price history and charts
Charts show, for each time bucket, the cheapest ask across all marketplaces at that time. Ranges up to 30 days are drawn from the raw observations; longer ranges use daily closing prices, which we keep permanently. All-time high and low are the highest and lowest daily cheapest closes on record for that item, with their dates.
Market stats on item pages
Typical daily move is the median, across the marketplaces pricing the item, of each marketplace's day-to-day price volatility over the last 30 days. We take the median per venue instead of the volatility of the cheapest price because the cheapest venue changes from day to day, which would exaggerate movement several-fold. Liquidity rank orders all tracked skins by their live listing counts. “Most often cheapest” counts on how many of the last 30 days each marketplace held the lowest price for the item.
Price changes and market reports
A price change is only meaningful when it compares like with like. Our weekly and monthly reports therefore compare each item across the same marketplaces at both ends of the period, and take the change — and both euro figures — from the marketplace whose move was the median among them. Items are included when at least two of the same marketplaces priced them at both ends, those marketplaces broadly agree about the move, and the starting price was at least €1.00. Graded collectibles (sticker slabs and “Ranked” stickers) and Souvenir weapons are excluded from the reports because one item name covers several distinct assets there — different grades or sticker loadouts — so the cheapest listing can legitimately jump many-fold without any single asset changing in value.
The SKINX index
SKINX tracks the 30 most liquid CS2 weapon skins, ranked by their listing counts over the trailing seven days and re-ranked at most every six hours. It is equal-weighted and chain-linked: for each hour, each skin's price ratio to the previous hour is computed over the marketplaces present in both hours — so a marketplace joining or dropping out of our coverage never registers as a price move — and the average of those ratios advances the index. The base is 1000 at the first calculation and is never rebased, so any range you view shows the real level and change for that segment. Two guards protect the series from data artifacts rather than market moves: a single skin's hourly ratio outside 0.5–2× sits out that hour, and an hourly move of the whole basket beyond ±20% is carried flat. Membership changes are chained through, which keeps the series continuous.
How long we keep data
Raw observations are kept for 45 days. Daily summaries — closing price, low, and listing count per item and marketplace — are kept permanently, which is what the all-time chart range and the market stats are built on.
What we do not show
Sales volumes: marketplaces do not publish them, so we do not estimate them. Ratings or reviews: we hold none, so our structured data carries none. Predictions: none of our figures are forecasts, and nothing on this site is financial advice.
Affiliate links
Some marketplace links are affiliate links and some placements are paid. Neither affects which price is shown or how offers are ordered; see the affiliate disclosure for details.
The rule behind all of this: when the data cannot support a figure, we show an empty state rather than an estimate. If you spot a number that looks wrong, tell us at info@49skins.com — corrections are welcome.
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