The Cheapest Listing Is Seldom the Price You Pay

Any skin trading site shows each item with one price, the cheapest live listing. That figure helps you, but it leaves out who is selling.

A peer-to-peer market lists items from individual people. The cheapest listing belongs to whoever asks the least today, and a low ask says nothing about whether that person will complete the trade.

Every seller has a completion rate, the share of their trades that finished. The cheapest offer on an item can come from a seller far below a sensible bar, one who completes only a small share of trades. Buying from them tends to mean a long wait followed by a refund.

Filter to sellers who complete at least 80 percent of their trades, the bar Skins.Deals buys against, and the price can move. As an illustration: if the cheapest listing for an Arcana asks $42.50 and the cheapest from a seller above the bar asks $51.30, the reliable copy costs about 21 percent more.

You could see both prices on the market. Only the second led to an Arcana in your inventory with good odds.

We could advertise the market's cheapest ask. It matches the raw feed and looks better in a price comparison.

It would also mean a checkout total that does not match the grid, or an order that fails and refunds days later. We show the cheapest listing from a seller who clears the reliability bar. Some days that matches the market's cheapest price, other days it sits above it, and it is the listing we would buy for you.

1. 1
   Check the completion rate first, and treat anything under 80 percent as a real chance of a refund instead of an item
2. 2
   Check the delivery time, since minutes is common on Dota 2 and days tends to mean a trade hold
3. 3
   Question any listing far below every other one, which often belongs to an inactive seller

Price and reliability measure different things, and the cheapest listing often scores low on reliability. A quote that weighs both looks worse in a comparison and serves you better when you want the item.