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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Ellis' Cap value change effect

An interesting idea just came to us.  As Valve just had basically a huge giveaway to the TF2 community.  When they made Ellis' Cap craftable, the ensuing trading frenzy and price inflation gave back quite a bit to everyone who had one of these formerly useless hats in their backpack.

As of today, TF2Stats.net has approximately 74,019 backpacks with Ellis' Cap.  That is not a perfect # of course.  There are likely more Ellis' Caps out there due to hoarding and Valve only gives Tf2stats.net a portion of the total outstanding backpacks.  But it's the best # we have so let's go with it.

Prior to the update, Ellis was worth a scrap or two maximum.  At today's current price of refined metal, around $0.55 each.  2 scrap are valued at 0.22 refined.  Once they were changed to craftable they jumped to between a refined and 1.33 refined in value.  Let's say 1.22 refined to keep it simple.  That's 1 refined in value for 74,000 (at least) Ellis' Caps.  Thus, Valve gave back over $40,000 to the community.  Thanks Gabe!

edit: thanks Wolverine and BaconCat for catching our math error!