Using the simulator, I've always lost money from opening cases. But how do real cases
compare? Of course, I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars to find out, instead
I simply watched and then analysed MrTweeday's 24 hour stream where he unboxed no less than
2,228 cases. Give or take. Just a quick warning, although I spent a good amount of time making
this video, there could be mistakes. There probably are. But I feel the sample size and
excel sheet is big enough to provide a fairly accurate representation of what you can expect
from unboxing cases. And I've found some pretty interesting things out that I'm going to share
with you. It wasn't enough to record the cases he ended
up unboxing. I also kept track of the ones either side. From my own experience with the
simulator I wondered if there was some sort of conspiracy where the best items would land
either side of the one that I'd get, but MrTweeday's unboxing shows a very different story. He
lands on a surprisingly large number of rarer skins than the drops either side. This includes
restricted, classified, covert and the stat-trak versions as well. This isn't the entire story,
however, which we'll get onto later on when assessing the value of the weapons he unboxed.
You'll notice that I had slightly fewer results for the side weapons than the main one. This
is because occasionally in the stream it would glitch up and would only show the drops that
he got. Since this affects less than 0.5% of the data, I've decided to ignore it since
it shouldn't impact the probability, but may reduce the total value of the drops. I'll
mention it as and when it's needed. Ahh, the knives. The things that everybody
wants to know about. He got 5, 3 of which were within minutes of each other. Two were
stat-traks, which is the rarest type of drop that you can get. You'll also notice that
the only knives listed are the ones he actually landed on. No near misses. I searched for
unfortunate case openings and the only video I could find of narrowly missing a knife is
THIS one, which I think is a fake. I HOPE it is. Actually I don't. Maybe I do. I just
don't know. But hey, we're studying the 24 hour case unboxing session here and from it
it's easy to assume that Valve may have removed near misses with knives to spare everybody's
sanity. But I have spoken to people who have claimed to have had near misses!
Since multiple different case types are unboxed, this raises even more questions- are you more
likely to get better items with some cases than others? I created this table which details
the chances of unboxing weapon types from different containers. It's a bit complicated
to look at but you can see that Mr Tweeday had above average luck across the board, scoring
fewer mil-specs than the drops either side of the ones that he landed on time after time.
If you only want to know about the drops he ended up getting, look at the Middle numbers
here. In this table I've combined all 3 weapons
from each case, making the total sample size 6,684. I'd ignore Operation Bravo here since
it's based on just one case, an annoying case that caused me wayyy too much extra work.
However, the rest are interesting to look at. They all hover in the region between 70
and 80% to get a mil-spec. It seems as though Operation Phoenix is your best chance at getting
something more exotic than your standard mil-spec and was also responsible for 3 of the 5 knives
that Mr Tweeday ended up getting despite being less than 7% of the total number of cases!
Unfortunately, probability and gambling in general encourages you to look for patterns
where there may be none. It's interesting to spot something like this, but always take
it with a pinch of salt since next time the same sort of unboxing takes place it could
be completely different. Please don't do it for a while though, Mr Tweeday, I need time
to recover from this one first! In bold at the bottom are the average % of
getting different grades of weapons, regardless of container. These are calculated from the
actual number of drops themselves and not just from the table shown here. Just a weird
little thing did. Statisticians hate me. If anybody's wanting to make a case simulator,
THESE are the values you're probably best off using. Saying that, even this sample size
isn't big enough to properly work out the chances of the less common drops. I refuse
to believe that the Stat-trak Coverts are more rare than stat-trak knives. But don't
shoot me, shoot the data! All these percentages are all well and good,
but what we want to know is the VALUE. So I went through the market-place and calculated
the average for each grade of weapon. I did this by adding up the current value of all
of the different cases in their numerous conditions then by dividing them by the number of variations
there were. Particularly with the older boxes, the average amount is pushed up by ridiculously
expensive 'factory new' models which are likely sought after by collectors of now no longer
available cases. I assumed that the chances of getting a factory new weapon was just as
likely as any of the others, mainly because I have no idea how else to do it.
While we're on this, let's take a detour and try to work out the average value of each
case you open, per case-type. I did this by multiplying the chance of getting each grade
of weapon by the value of that type. It got a bit meaningless in the middle of this stage
but out of it I've produced these numbers. If you can buy and uncrate them for less than
this value then it's probably worth doing. In fact, these figures are actually rather
conservative since I didn't include the REMOTE, REMOTE possibility of getting a knife and
the stat-trak coverts I believe were probably under-represented in this case-opening session.
But since the chances of those is so minimal it would only add perhaps 5 to 10 cents onto
the value... if that. Older cases are more valuable. It may be worth stocking up on them
as they'll only become less common with time. Have a look at the coverts here. Which do
you think is the least valuable- the left, middle or right? Believe it or not, it's the
middle. Although Mr Tweeday got a staggering 11 covert drops, they were all rubbishy ones.
It shows how much variance in value there is, even within the same category of weapon
grade. Had I only got the average value of all types of weapons from that category then
I would have over-valued the values of Mr Tweeday's Covert drops by almost $100, well
over 100%. Averaging the value of the cases would also have undervalued the value of the
drops either side of the one that he actually got. I didn't bother doing this bit neatly,
but you can see the names of the weapons below, the average prices to the right of the table
and the average value of each of the weapon types in the bottom left.
You'll notice that I've left the value of the knives empty. This is because I also had
to manually look up the value of each of these. For 3 of them it was easy since they're shown
on the market-place. They were all worth a reasonable amount. However, Stat-Trak Karambit
Slaughters aren't listed as available. This is because they are SO rare that they either
aren't available, or are worth more than the maximum tradable amount on the steam market,
which is currently at $400. 'How can that be?' you might ask. It means that the only
way that these are currently traded is in private trades, where it may be swapped in
exchange for, say, 2 $300 skins, upping the price ceiling to whatever somebody's willing
to trade them for. I'm no expert in these things, so I asked Mr Tweeday himself what
he thinks they're worth and he valued them at around $1,000...
...each. BUT DON'T NAIL HIM TO THE WALL for that. Like I said, they're not on the market,
so they're worth whatever somebody's willing to trade for them.
So with that in mind, I added the value of the drops up and it came to $4,249.53, which
is well over double the value of the amounts either side. Isn't he lucky with his case
openings. Of course, it's not as simple as that. That's
not pure profit and you'd have to be a complete MORON to think it is. Let's look at how much
it costs to get the cases and keys in the first place. Firstly, the cases. Operation
Breakout is the most expensive. And then the keys, which range somewhere between $2.50
and $3 per case. Add all of these up and... there's the cost.
And without keeping you waiting, here are the final figures. Within the space of 24
hours, Mr Tweeday transformed over $6,000 of virtual items into $4,000 of virtual weapons,
losing a third of their total value in the process. Without the two stat-trak slaughters,
you're talking closer to losing TWO thirds of their value and having just $2,000 worth
of items at the end of it. Add to that the additional market fees you incur when you
trade an item, which I believe is around 15%, and you're losing a huge amount of virtual
money. If you were unfortunate enough to be the guy getting the drops either side you'd
be losing even more, potentially losing a staggering 75% of the original value of your
items. And where is it all going? Actually, it's gone the moment you put real money into
your steam wallet, after that it's just about converting it into games or skins. And of
course it's going to Valve which uses it to host the servers, fund the community tournaments,
to support future projects of theirs and of course, to PROPHET, but you knew all that
already. Whose guess was closest to this conclusion?
I understand that the estimate about the $2,000 of stat-trak knives has changed it a bit but
I calculated MrTweeday's end value to be 67.2% of the original cost.
Congratulations to Fiedd who predicted 67.327%. 5 klikpoints to you for an uncannily close
guess. In joint second place were Sunsleeper1, Calsta619 and salix5667 who all predicted
a very simple 67%. 3 klikpoints to each of you. And Nick Kim and _ Pilgrim both guessed
67.45%, giving them 1 klikpoint each. Well done to all of you!
As for guessing to the left or to the right, LEFT seemed far more popular. Perhaps it had
something to do with Beyonce. I wouldn't know. However, as you have seen from this video,
the middle was by far the best. Only 4 people guessed this correctly! Well done to Mag 7
who predicted an eerily accurate 68% as well as saying the centre would be the best. I
think that deserves 5 klikpoints and it makes him the first person to be awarded klikpoints
more than once! Etooch T. C. got everything but his percentage right, 3 klikpoints to
you and 1 klikpoint for Fillefjonkas fjonk and Julius B, who said the middle.
MrMarcel2605 valued the Karambits at an even higher value, thinking that they were worth
over 1,600 dollars each! He also spotted that Mr Tweeday was lucky with the quantity of
covert and restricted cases that he unboxed. 2 klikpoints.
Jason Zhao had a good stab at a calculation and bravely used precise numbers. I love it.
Unfortunately he was wrong but he still gets 2 klikpoints!
I don't know what Miles Budden was talking about but I liked the idea of Visa versa.
Have a klikpoint. fisslimen and others argued over the value
of the knives. I hope this video has been interesting. No klikpoints for you though!
HAHAHAHA. Well done to CRAZYFISH for spotting that only
3 of the 5 knives were included in the video! I checked the original video file and they
were all there. Blame it on Youtube! I have now uploaded a half-speed version where I
can confirm that all 5 knives are present. I apologise profusely. Yup, you heard me correctly-
PROFUSELY. Have 2 klikpoints. I hope you've enjoyed this analysis. Thanks
to MrTweeday for permission and for providing the data in the first place. You can check
out the original 24 hour case opening stream in the description of this video. Have FUN!