New TF2 blog post....more Christmas shenanigans...

Gotta love Valve.  Hell, they make boatloads of cash on TF2 but they deserve it!  They constantly put out content and don't rely on anything in the past to keep the game going.  Engie has some Australian Christmas revelations with pyro.  New pyro flamethrower looks clear.  Link here.

A good site to visit: Skial.com

There are lots of servers and trade forums.  One we came upon that we found by pure accident was skial.com and their trade server.  They have a strong international following so a trader can get a more worldly view of pricing, not just the US where a lot of us reside.   Interestingly their trading server map uses our little spreadsheet (although an older version but we're working on getting them updated!) as its background!  Pretty cool, you should check it out.  In your TF2 server search window look for "skial".

Also, check out their trade forums here.  We like the rule "only complain about an item's price once per thread".  Genius!

Official: key waiting period removed for recent purchasers

With a little digging and help from you we can say that keys are now officially tradeable upon purchase for anyone who made a recent purchase within 30 days.  However, as we already posted NEW accounts will have to wait until your credit card is verified or they catch you skimming cards.

Thanks to Sterling Peoples.  Link here.

Server vs. Forum pricing

One thing I'd like to comment on today is the occasional discrepancy between the prices for items on trade servers and the pricing on forums.  Often the in-game price for items will be further away from the market price in both directions than forums.   Why is this?  It's very simple really: on a trade server the motivation is to move items more in the moment and to a smaller audience.  Everyone streams to trade servers once new items are released and promos are unlocked.  This is the place to get high variance from market pricing.  Traders with 'hot' items will unload them to the impulse buyer.  Traders with 'not so hot' items will look to just sell them to craft or upgrade their items.

Posting to a forum works as a wait and see situation potentially to a larger audience.  There are many thousands of users who look at forums while away from their gaming pc/mac.  They aren't buying or selling on impulse most of the time and pricing will be closer to market.  New items can be pricy on forums but similarly to trading on a server there is a short window of time for this.

Carry on.

We screwed the pooch! (and site update)

To err is human, so they say.  And to put it simply we are embarrassed to not have caught the Spine Chilling Skull 2010 error on price.  While his name will remain nameless, someone (Alex) mistakenly put the 2011's price in for the 2010 hat (which was around a Bills hat or 6-7 keys at the time).  That said, we will remove the price for this hat temporarily until the market decides what the hat is worth again.  These hats trade slowly so it may be a bit until we re-update that price.

Thanks to several people for catching this: "Sterling Peoples" who contacted us directly and a few on the forums, "Traveler74", and "corporate tax" and "KingOfMars27" on SPUF.  Our apologies for the confusion and kudos to the smart traders who caught it.  We changed the label for the older version to include the year 2010 to make sure this doesn't happen again!

That said, we can announce some progress on our site update.  We expect to have work completed by mid-January.  Some long-awaited improvements are on their way, including better searching as well as other improvements.  We'll keep the major details under wraps until then but as we said it will address many of the concerns that we have heard from you.

New update, get crafting!

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed wearable gibs spawning outside of the map
• Fixed some missing strings for the Backwards Ballcap
• Updated these items so they can be crafted and traded:
  • The Dr. Whoa
  • The Dashin' Hashshashin
  • The Sharp Dresser
  • The Point and Shoot
  • The War Head
• Updated the localization files 

Undocumented changes

• Added Naughty & Nice Winter Crates. 

Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Added video options UI for Windows Vista / Windows 7 DirectX extensions. Disabling the extensions will increase memory usage, but can improve compatibility with video drivers.

Store price vs. TF2 trading price

TF2 trader Shadow brings up a good point, store prices vs. TF2 trading prices:

Shadow said...
"Dude there's a mistake there infernal impaler (clean) should be 7-8 refined and the dirty one 4-6 just like the aspector they are the same price on the store."

Sometimes when an item first enters the marketplace it is close to its store price (or if its a promo from a game, its game price).  However, this is NOT always the case.  Moreover, two items from the same promo or the same price at the store can have completely different demand on them. 

Case in point as Shadow brings up the Infernal Impaler and the Apparitions Aspect.  For whatever reason people seem to place more DEMAND on the Aspect.  Therefore a higher price can be asked for it.  It's not complicated but a lot of traders have trouble with this and sometimes its hard to rationalize.

Your eternal blog post

The new crates having been out a couple days and the marquee item is clearly the new strange Your Eternal Reward.  Not particularly surprising, as the "unique" or regular, dropped version is consistently one of those items people actually pay a scrap for (along with the Original, Huntsman, and whatever is new).  Also, Your Eternal Reward has been one of the best selling items in the store.  Maybe some of you spy gurus can shed some light on this for us.  Just de-cloak and jot down a few words.

More later.