In an event that future generations of historians will point to as evidence of our arrogance and decadence, a spendthrift player spent six figures on a single Counter-Strike AK-47 skin: Global Offensive, discovered by Dexerto (open in new tab), Chinese Edition Buff's CS:GO player spent ¥1,095,000 (Chinese yuan) on a "factory new" Wild Lotus skin adorned with four rare stickers on a marketplace for exchanging digital goods like skins and stickers. This is approximately $160,000/£131,500.

Wild Lotus skins are rare, with less than 3,000 skins in existence, and the fact that they are "factory new" makes them even more rare; CS:GO skins (thankfully) do not wear out with use, but they do drop from "battle-scarred" to " Factory new" and may drop in condition. Other Wild Lotus skins have sold for close to $10,000 (opens in new tab) (reasonable), but the untouched condition of this skin was particularly rare and therefore particularly attractive.

Besides, despite the rarity of the skins themselves, the most valuable part was actually the stickers: four Reason Holo stickers of the skins used in the 2014 Katowice CS:GO Major tournament were worth about $40,000 each! The stickers were worth about $40,000 each. Not to dazzle you with my math skills, but that means the four stickers alone were worth about $160,000.

I was a little surprised at the concept of someone like Marie Antoinette in a video game spending sports car money on a totally unimportant weapons skin, but this is par for the course in the CS:GO community.

While this deal is an outlier (Dexerto notes that it would be in the top 10 most expensive skins), players are consistently dropping thousands of dollars on weapon skins. It is possible to buy a skin for over $400,000 right now. Plenty of rare skin collectors, barely rolling their eyes, will tell you that in the context of the current CS:GO marketplace, $160,000 for this skin is an entirely reasonable estimate (open in new tab).

After all, as one such collector said on Twitter (opens in new tab), "Whoever buys this already has 10 [Mercedes AMGs]. Someone, please, get me a new guillotine from the factory.