Hi! Welcome to this hopefully comprehensive guide of how to trade in TF2! It doesn't matter if you just bought premium today, have been dabbling in trading for a little bit, or are a veteran, im sure you can learn something useful from this guide! Now, before we begin, you're going to need these simple tools to help get you started.

* AT LEAST 1 key in metal (Note: The more you start off with the easier it is)
* Mobile Authenticator (Note: You dont "need" this, but people will require upwards of 50% overpay on their stuff if you dont have it)
*a non-private backpack

These are all very simple, and easy to get. Once you have all three of these, you will be 100% ready to trade!

Please note: If you have been trading for a while, you do not need to read this, although you still can! This is for the very beginners!

Alright! You've decided to get into TF2 trading, and let me tell you, its ALOT of fun if you know what you're doing, and it can be VERY annoying if you dont. I've made good deals and bad deals, but overall I've made profit and i'm here to help you make profit too.

So, first off, lets teach you the basics of trading. There are a few terms you'll need to know, such as:
"Overpay" - paying extra for things in items, items being ANYTHING not considered pure
"Pure" - being keys, any type of metal, and Max Heads
"Quicksell" - which means to sell something for 25%+ off.
"Ref" - short for refined metal, the common currency of tf2
"#.##" - If someone is saying something like "buying craft hats for 1.11 Ref" that means they're buying craft hats for 1 refined metal, and 1 scrap. 0.11 = 1 Scrap, and 0.33 = 1 Reclaimed
"Craft Hats" - Any hat that is craftable is considered a craft hat, and almost all of them are worth about 1.22 Ref. Some like the Brotherhood of Arms, Hashin' Dashashin' Etc. are worth a little bit more

Now that you know the very bare bones basic terms, here are the six different items that exist in TF2 trading.

-Unique: Any craft hat, weapon, or tool will be in the Unique quality. usually these are worth the least amount of pure
-Vintage: Anything that existed before the mannconomy update is known as vintage, which just means you cant craft it into metal and its worth slightly more. Some vintages, like metal, are worth alot of money. but most arent worth much more than their unique counterparts. (Note: if its a weapon its usually worth 0.33 ref-0.77 ref, if its a craft hat or something else its worth a lot)
-Genuine: Genuine items are items that are only obtainable for a short time by doing some sort of promotional offer. I.E. you buy this game, you also get a genuine blah blah to go with it! These items are usually worth more than their unique counter-parts, and are also rarer, but more difficult to sell.
-Strange: Strange items are another kind of variant to unique weapons and cosmetics. However, strange items keep track of certain things such as; Kills, Ubers, Destructions, depending on the weapons. They're usually worth more than uniques.
-Decorated Weapons: Not to be confused with reskins, Decorated weapons are TF2's version of CSGO items. They're just reskins of the stock weapons, and unless you have a very nice red FN, they're very difficult to sell. Don't buy them unless you want to keep them!
-Unusual: Unusuals are the pinnacle of all TF2 trading. They're extremely rare and worth over 20$, some are even worth 200-3000 USD. These are what you're working to trading in TF2, except me I hate unusuals because they're so valuable they're difficult to sell.

Alright! Now that you have the basic six different types of items down, were going to move on into the tools of the trade, if you will. If you've been trading for a while, you might have noticed there are other types of items too such as collectors and haunted, but those are rare and not important for you at this specific level of trading.

So, there are two major sites you'll need to know about to become a successful trader. The first, and most important, is bible.tf

Bible.tf: Backpack.tf (Bible.tf as its more commonly known) is the most important tool for ANY tf2 trader ever. If you do not listen to or follow backpack.tf prices, you will be called out as a scammer, sharker, or any other nasty name. Although I think its very un-userfriendly, Once you get used to it you'll kind of know what to do. Basically, log in, go to your backpack, and there you can see the prices of all your items in your backpack if its not private. If your backpack is private, you'll need to make it public. But I suggest you take a few minutes to browse the site and learn how to use it.

Scrap.tf : Scrap.tf (Or Scam.tf, as I like to call it) is the most common 'quicksell' site. Meaning they'll buy anything you own for very, very cheap. If you ever find yourself something you just cant sell or is duped or is a decorated skin, just come here and you can probably sell it here. Useful for doing some stuff later on, when you become an intermediate trader.


Great! Now you know most items, and you know most the tools you need to become a successful trader! I'd recommend you start out with your 20-30 ref buying crafthats or bulk stranges for 1.11 ref, and then turning around and selling for 1.22 or 1.33, depending on the crafthat or the strange. If you find someone selling something for cheaper than its backpack.tf price (Which every trading server will have the ability to check peoples profile, just type in chat !bp Theirname) follow your gut and buy it if you can, EXCEPT if it has any parts, paints, killstreaks, or spells on it. If it does, just ignore it for now. Your mission, as a novice trader, is to turn that one key you started with into at least three. Once you do that, you'll officially have evolved into a somewhat good trader, and should have an idea of what to do to make profit. Once you've done that, feel free to go to the next guide!

Thanks for reading!

So, you've been trading for a while, know the ins and outs and can turn a profit... Now heres were stuff might start to get difficult. You might've noticed some of these odd things, such as "Strange Parts" "Spells" "Collector's" and even "Killstreaks". Now if you're more of an advanced trader, and already know what all these are and how they work in the economy, I implore you to go on ahead to advanced trading, to learn how to profit with such items.

Parts
So, if you're still here, let me explain some of the add-on parts. Strange Parts can be equipped to unique or strange (maybe other stuff too i've never seen it though or tried it) weapons/cosmetics, to give them extra strange qualities. Such as a Strange Sniper Rifle only comes with "kills" but you can put on a part to give it "Headshot kills" so now it tracks both kills and headshot kills. Most people do not pay for parts, unless its very relevant (Ubers, Uber Assists, Headshot kills on a sniper, backstab kills on a knife, etc) on the weapon, and even then most people dont pay for parts. I like to think of parts as a sweetener, say you have a 10 ref strange with a 20 ref part, you might be able to 1:1 it for a 11-12 ref item if they want your item with the part enough, or so on. I wouldnt recommend paying the extra price bp.tf says for these if they're on (Just click the item and it'll tell you the original price w/o the part).

Spells
Spells, on the other hand, are special effects that happen but only on halloween, and usually are some kind of trail. These spells only drop on halloween and during halloween events, and are only seeable on halloween/full moon. Some of them can get super expensive, like up to 25-40 keys, and some people are willing to pay extra for spells if they like it. I'd recommend trying to just buy for regular price or to ignore, as they are alot like parts in the sense they can be used as sweeteners to 1:1 items, but not for pure.

Killstreak
Killstreakers, are just like spells, but instead of trails you get glowy eyes and its only when you get a streak of kills (hence the name). There are three types of Killstreakers. Normal, which just tracks your kills on that life, Specialized killstreak, which makes your gun glow a certain color once you get a kill, and it glows faster the more kill you get, and Professional killstreak, which gives you glowy eyes after 10 kills. These effects reset when you die, and a pre-determined by the fabricator you use. Fabricators are only obtainable from MvM, and you have ot use MvM parts to fix them up. Very few people will pay extra for normal KS items, but for spec-ks and pro-ks people are willing to buy. Be careful though, as, for example, a 1 key hat with a pro -KS backpack.tf will say its 5 keys, but the best offer you can get on it is 2 keys. If you find someone trying to sell spec-pro killstreaks, try to bargain a discount.

Collectors
Collector items are weird, I'm not 100% how you get a collector fab, I think its a random drop but only for a certain amount of time, but how it works is you get some random strange and like 200 copies of a weapon and fuse it with the kit and out pops a collectors. Its usually not worth it to collector bank, but I guess its a cool way to say "I really like this item!" if you wanted to keep it. Hard to sell and not worth it most of the time.

Well, the intermediate guide isnt really a checkpoint, just some information to help you out. I hope this bit of information helps you, and the next time someone offers to sell something worth 1 key for 12 keys because it has parts/spells on it, you'll be smart enough to not buy it, unless you actually want the item.

Alright, so you either read your way to here, or are confident in your trading ability, and skipped to here. Either way is fine with me. Now, you may have noticed that this guide is leaned more towards the newbie trading aspect, and doesnt really talk about unusual trading, mostly just getting your feet off your ground. So now were going to get into slightly more juicy stuff, but still not unusual trading yet.

So now that you've mastered the arts of deal hunting, using backpack.tf, and even how to identify part prices from regular gun prices, im going to teach you the easiest ways to make good money, upwards of 3-4 keys a day (Not using my method thats a secret for me only lol) and to have fun doing it as well.


Method #1
The first method is banking of any type, I'd prefer strange or hat banking. this will usually net you around a key to 2-3 keys depending on how lucky you are, how much you are searching, and how friendly you are. Yes, being friendly matters. it is the most important part, the people you're trading with know you're underpaying, and they're either allowing it because they're not the best trader, or more likely been trying to sell it for a while. Be nice, ask them how they're doing, and your bound to not only lighten the mood, but also have a higher chance of getting the item. Also look out for bulk sellers, that will help you out a lot! This is for getting your feet off the ground, or for starting scrap2unusuals (Dont be that guy that just asks for stuff in return to be in a video thats just a bad person thing to do)


Method #2
The next method and the best to do if you have some spare keys laying around, after you've done some hat banking: Kit fabrication. In the previous chapter we talked about guns with killstreaks, well to put killstreaks on a gun, you have to have a kit, and you make a kit out of a fabricator, which uses MvM parts to produce. A very good and cheap way to make money is to find someone who has a bunch of pro ks fab and try to buy one for cheap, like a 5+ key one for 1-2 keys, people will usually do it because they dont have time or think its a bad deal to craft the kit. Its fairly easy, here is the only time you should be using scrap.tf, buy yourself some parts and spec ks kits, and make yourself that pro ks fab into a pro ks kit, and then sell it back to scrap.tf. Never put the killstreak on your gun, as you'll be losing profit. I've once netted about 20+ keys in a day just by doing kit banking, and I'd recommend it.

Of course, both of these ways will only get you so far. If you finally have a 100$+ inventory, and want to get into unusual trading, although I beg you not too, its not fun, time consuming, and people are jerks, but if you decide to, this is not the guide for you, you can find plenty of unusual guides out there though, so good luck on your future trading endeavors!

If you've read through my whole guide, thank you so much. Even if you didnt read through the whole thing, really, thank you. Its been a great experience to write this to help the future generations of traders, and even help some old ones too. If you learned anything in this guide, please leave a thumbs up and favorite, it means alot!

You might have noticed this guide doesnt go into unusual trading, or doesnt have any pictures. I'm really sorry about that, In the future if this guide gets lots of likes and stuff, I will work on improving it graphically and maybe even getting into pesky unusual trading. But until then, its leaning more on the noob trader side, and thats exactly were I want it.




If my guide helped you, and you want to return the favor a little bit, feel free to send me some Donations, I love and appreciate all of it. Also, if you need any more help, or any clarifications on anything, feel free to add me! I accept all invites! And finally, before I go, if you have any suggestions to make the guide better, feel free to comment them below!