Float values explained: why wear decides price

Every CS2 skin carries a number between 0 and 1, assigned at creation, permanent for the item’s life: the float value. The wear label everyone sees — Factory New through Battle-Scarred — is just a bracket drawn over that number. The market, increasingly, trades the number.

The number behind the label

Lower float = less wear. The five wear labels partition the 0–1 range into fixed brackets, so the label tells you which bracket an item landed in — but not where in the bracket. Two Field-Tested copies of the same skin can sit at opposite ends of their range and look visibly different in game. Float-literate buyers therefore price the number, not the label; inspection tooling (CSFloat’s is the best known) made the number public knowledge, and the market repriced accordingly.

Where the premiums live

Premiums concentrate at the extremes, for the same scarcity logic that governs everything here:

• Very low floats — the cleanest possible copies of a skin — are rare outcomes of the creation roll, and the cleanest-looking item in a status economy carries a bid.
• Very high floats attract a genuine collector niche: the most battle-worn copy of a skin is its own kind of rare.
• Bracket edges matter. An item sitting just inside a better-looking bracket prices differently than one just outside it, because the label is what casual buyers filter by.

Pattern and float premiums often stack — see pattern premiums for the other half of that story.

Skin-specific float caps

Not every skin spans the whole 0–1 range: each has its own permitted min/max. A consequence worth knowing: a skin whose floor is naturally high can make its lowest-possible copies disproportionately valuable, because “best achievable” is defined per skin, not globally. Our skin pages display each item’s float range for exactly this reason.

Checking a float before you buy or sell

Inspect before you price — never assume from the label. When selling a premium-float item, list where buyers can verify the number; a float worth paying for is a float the buyer can see. And when comparing your exit options, remember premiums survive fees differently — run the net math on realistic prices, not sticker dreams.

More terms: glossary.