Continued price flattening in the TF2 economy

If you could visualize the prices of all the TF2 items out in the marketplace (and there's a LOT) as the horizon, you would see a panoramic of hills and valleys and some very tall peaks.  With the height of the hill or mountain representing the value of the item.  The highest peaks would represent items like Max/Buds/Bills (we're not considering unusuals here because of their subjective values).

Over the past six months the average height (value) of all those peaks has flattened towards 1 ref.  No matter how "hot" the hat was, it's hill is shrinking.  That's pretty simple to visualize and understand in economic terms.  That is, with such a broad number of items, and with most widely available (except Genuine Maul maybe) their price always goes towards the lowest common denominator - the craft hat.  Without the influx of thousands of F2P players, and some converting to paid players, the price flattening would have been even more severe.

Max/Buds/Bills on the other hand are all seeing a resurgence.  Their peaks in our mountain example look even slightly taller and thinner now.  Their actual values in $ terms has only come down modestly.  Now they appear to be heading back up.  With black market keys/refined metals (thanks sourceop) creating the market's REAL dollar values - at $2 a key and every seller asking for 5+ keys - a Bill's hat is a good investment again.

TF2 Google Spreadsheet has moved!

Yes.  The spreadsheet has a new home.  While editing the latest item count percentages which replaced the item counts, I realized that there is never enough room for commentary on the items or what is happening in the TF2 marketplace.  This will allow the spreadsheet to remain the most important item but also to make commentary on the TF2 marketplace possible.  It will also allow more information on statistics to see where people are coming from to see the spreadsheet.