Eerie Saturday, final round...(keys won, no more emails)

We are giving away two more Eerie keys right now. They are going to emailers #20 and #120 (one each). Email us now, one email per person, and include a link to your steam profile (many names have duplicates). Contest details and answers to most of your questions are here. Don't send multiple emails, no warnings and instant disqualification if you do. If you don't win, tell your friend and maybe he or she will.

Update: these keys have been won.  no more emails for this contest please.

This contest's winners were "Lulz # DVD" and "Joey Is A Pootis".  Congratulations to them both and good luck to everyone for the next Halloween giveaway! Details are here. Some of you have asked questions that the answers to are right there in the link, including our email address. Take a moment to read it if you have questions.

Eerie Saturday round #2 (keys won, no more emails)

We are giving away two Eerie keys right now. They are going to emailers #31 and #131 (one each). Email us now, one email per person, and include a link to your steam profile (many names have duplicates). Contest details and answers to most of your questions are here. Don't send multiple emails, no warnings and instant disqualification if you do. If you don't win, tell your friend and maybe he or she will.

Update: these eerie keys have been won, no more emails please.

A winner forfeit his winning eerie key because he sent multiple emails.  Folks, don't let this happen to you.  Send one email per contest.

This contest's winners were Knighthammer323 and ZenSharpShooter. Congratulations to them both and good luck to everyone for the next Halloween giveaway! Details are here. Some of you have asked questions that the answers to are right there in the link, including our email address. Take a moment to read it if you have questions.

Trade Scanning Software question cont'd...

Another trader had a follow-up question about our Trade Scanning software that monitors actual trades to give us pricing information...(along with our team of expert traders of course, can't forget them).

"How exactly does it work? I mean does it connect to the Steam API and how do you know a price is real and not just a wild trade or something?  Wouldn't a voting system be better?

- Jimmy Fallon's Gangsta Persona"

A quick re-cap of our response to a previous question:

• First off, our software runs 24/7/365. It is still a work in progress and for our site revamp we are going to have it integrated into the site so that we are real-time. It shows prices of trades that occur and the value in keys and/or metal that is exchanged. For now, I go through the output which is a mysql database and examine each trade.
• Many of the trades from the software (80-90%) confirm prices already on the spreadsheet. So if you don't see a price change, it often means that is just where a price has 'settled'. If a trade shows a price different from the spreadsheet I try to confirm this with feedback from my pricers as well as publicly listed prices for items (outpost, tp, trade servers). About half the time a trade is not for the price listed, there is no confirmation in the marketplace. In that case, the price stays the same. What causes this? Typically a quicksell, someone just trying to liquidate. The other half of the time, the price has indeed shifted and after the same research as above, we adjust the price on the sheet. And if there are multiple trades in the database showing a real change in price then we look for confirmation but ultimately require less proof since it is already there. Most often in this case the price is adjusted.

In response to Jimmy's (great name btw) question:

While we can't divulge exactly what happens with the software, it does track trades using the Steam API.  We see the relevant information: the item, the quality (genuine, vintage, dirty, etc), the date and then a value that was exchanged for it.  It can be in keys or metal or both.  When we have it tweaked to be real-time we will have a 'ticker'.  More on that later.

With trades that are wildly out of the market-price range, based on standard deviations, they are automatically ignored.  Anything that sneaks through, say, for a new item that has no average price yet, as I said we inspect each trade so I will just see the discrepancy then.

Voting on item values is not a good alternative to actual trade prices.  I get emails every day from people who think their item is worth a HOUWAR because it has the same rarity.  There are teams of people out there whose goal is to bump the prices of their own items.  Remember the B.M.O.C. back in the early Spring?  Just like the stock market, prices are what people pay (not what owners think their loot is worth).

An Eerie Saturday morning...(keys won, no more emails)

We are giving away two Eerie keys right now. They are going to emailers #27 and #127 (one each). Email us now, one email per person, and include a link to your steam profile (many names have duplicates). Contest details and answers to most of your questions are here. Don't send multiple emails, no warnings and instant disqualification if you do. If you don't win, tell your friend and maybe he or she will.

Update: keys have been won.  no more emails for this contest please.

This contest's winners were Frog Boy and "Epalaka, Acutulus Unus". Congratulations to them both and good luck to everyone for the next Halloween giveaway! Details are here. Some of you have asked questions that the answers to are right there in the link, including our email address. Take a moment to read it if you have questions.