The surprise announcement of Counter-Strike 2 (opens in new tab), currently in limited beta and scheduled to launch this summer, had one very important piece of news for existing Counter-Strike players: a very important announcement for Global Offensive players The CS:GO skin market has always been an attractive side-element of the game's success, with rare skins fetching ridiculously high prices, but with this element of the CS2 announcement, the value of even fairly unassuming skins is starting to skyrocket. (open in new tab).

Now, AK-47 skins have become the most expensive gun in CS:GO, and perhaps in video game history (thanks to Dexerto (open in new tab)). The skin is a minimal-wear StatTrak Tier 1 Case Hardened AK-47 with a Blue Gem pattern. In addition to this, the gun has four Katowice 2014 Titan holostickers, valued at approximately $60,000 each (opens in new tab).

The low wear means that this gun is actually in second best condition: there are currently no new factory variants of this item, but it could theoretically be unboxed at some point. This is the most expensive gun, but the most desired and valuable CS:GO skin is the Blue Gem Karambit knife in the video below, which reportedly had a bid of $1.5 million last year (the owner turned it down.) Not even the largest single CS:GO deal, this (unidentified) AK-47 Case Hardened and Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore for $775K (opens in new tab) would be (if legal, each gun is conveniently worth just under $400K).

CS:GO skin trader zipeL brokered a sale for his business associate Luksusbums (opens in new tab) involving an AK-47 and a Blue Gem Karambit (in well-worn condition and therefore worth significantly less than the factory new version above). zipeL brokered the sale, which totaled more than $500,000, of which $400,000 was for the AK-47 skins, and which it claims was completed on April 16.

Then zipeL continues with a bit of bragging: "All you nerds who told me to come back to me when the AK sold for $400,000, you're delusional zipeL, hello bitches." I asked zipeL a few questions about the sale and asked for financial proof of the transaction.

What is probably worth bearing in mind here is this: the CS:GO skin is a speculator's market, and the news of the CS2 transfer has caused a fairly unprecedented upsurge. Over the years, I have seen numerous claims of this or that skin being sold for mega bucks, but rarely have I seen any hard-hitting evidence that such a large sum of money has been handed over. To be clear, I am not disputing that this particular deal happened (after all, we live in a world where people buy monkey NFTs), but that what is going on right now in the CS:GO skin market is strange, unprecedented, and what is real and what is just an illusion is that it is difficult to know what is real and what is just an illusion.