It’s 2020 and we’re talking AK-47 | Case Hardened
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As one of the staple guns of the Counter-Strike franchise, the AK-47 has been supplied with a wide array of skins ranging in style and execution. It’s no wonder that skins covering one of the most-used rifles in the game instantly made their ways to the hearts of the users, and even the less popular and less aesthetically-acknowledged skins have their fans.
Although AK-47 | Case Hardened is not the rarest skin in the game, the varying pattern of the Case Hardened colors has created a sort of a collection of desirable types within the randomisation of this singular skin. Of course, the less common variants adequately raise the price of the skin.
At this moment of time, according to SteamAnalyst there are at least several hundred Case Hardened AK-47 skins available in market offers throughout its five wear levels and they are being frequently sold, so it’s still alive and worth your interest. But how does one get it and what to do with it once you have it?
Where can you get an AK-47 | Case Hardened?
There aren’t many occasions to drop a Case Hardened AK-47 in-game, but it’s not possible. It has been introduced in the first-ever weapon update in what is still called as just CSGO Weapon Case. It’s a case that doesn’t drop during play anymore, and unlike other cases still obtainable during CSGO matches, it costs around $17 in the CSGO market. Fortunately, this skin is of Classified rarity, so it’s much easier to loot it than the market’s favorite Covert AWPs.
Case Hardened patterns on AK-47
Certain skins for CSGO weapons and knives aren’t just stiffly-prepared meshes for models. Some of them have a random aspect that changes between every copy of the skin. This is exactly the case with AK-47 Case Hardened patterns. There’s a big canvas of carbon printed steel sheet that is displayed on a weapon at a random displacement. This texture is filled with big blue and yellow stains and a lesser amount of purple. A higher percentage of a given color gives rise to distinct, recognisable patterns discriminated in the market trade. The basic Case Hardened AK-47 skin with no distinct features might be worth between $200 and $400, and the specific patterns might raise that price by a lot. Below are several examples that are universally agreed upon, with some alterations to the naming and definition.
Blue Gem
An AK-47 Case Hardened is called a Blue Gem when a perceivable most of the surface is covered in the blue stain of the texture. Because of the patterning of the original mesh, it’s impossible for the whole gun to be blue. Sometimes called “Blue Top”, it seems to define the most important part of the Blue category. The most avid Case Hardened fans will measure the exact amount of visible blue by the seed. The bullseye pattern might raise the price of the AK by a couple of thousand dollars!
The Scar
Something even more peculiar- with this pattern the blue stains must be separated in the middle of the body of the gun with a silver line. AK-47 Case Hardened scar pattern can raise the price by more than $1500 in their best wears.
Gold
It’s a Case Hardened skin where the yellow pattern is mostly visible. Although not as prestigious as the other monolithic patterns, it still can make your skin gain extra couple hundreds of dollars in skin value.
Galaxy
This variant of AK-47 is composed of the most colors possible, having mostly yellow background and a lot of the purple stains. It’s sometimes also called a Rainbow pattern. Many different iterations come into this one and people will sometimes argue what counts as a Galaxy and what doesn’t. If you find an apt buyer for the pattern you happen to have, it might make your Case Hardened Kalashnikov at least a hundred bucks more expensive.
You can read a detailed description of other AK 47 | Case Hardened pattern in the elaborate but reader-friendly Steam community article.
Buying and selling AK-47 | Case Hardened
If you decided to skip the wait and go for the skin market to get your AK-47 with all its rainbowy glory, remember to not fall prey to any suspicious assumptions about the skin’s unique pattern and check them with available knowledge. Also, aiming at an AK-47 Case Hardened Minimal Wear would be optimal when it comes to the price-to-visuals ratio. Many people prefer Minimal Wear Case Hardened skins over the Factory New ones because they are less shiny.
Remember to take note of the pattern on your Case Hardened skin when determining the price you want to sell it for. It would be a shame to lose a fortune just by not recognizing that you are in possession of a Scar AK-47!
Also, it might happen that you come into possession of an unspecific pattern on a Case Hardened skin. In this case, you can also turn it easily into cash money using Skinwallet that will allow you to sell your skin and cash-out money through various e-wallet services.
Is AK-47 | Case Hardened still popular?
It surely had its heyday in past, as it is one of the oldest skins in the game. Maybe it dissipated from the mainstream trade, but also created a devoted fandom – there are people who can determine which of the thousands of patterns a given skin has by just looking at it. Such a following means that there are still people who value those AK-47s very high.
Summary
AK 47 Case Hardened represents a skin that is able to create a small trading universe around itself due to the variation of patterns on its skin, especially so with AK-47, which has a lot of surface on which the source mesh can spread. Getting one is not a very easy feat, but it’s also not impossible. Getting to know the most sought-after patterns might even pay off the effort into getting one, literally thousandfold!
