Creating a price suggestion

Remember!

backpack.tf is only a price guide. We do not set the prices in stone, that's what you - the community - does. At the core, price suggestions on backpack.tf are the compilation of actual economic activity, so be prepared to have evidence that supports your price suggestion.

Keep up to date with suggestion rules!

You are strongly recommended to read the following forum threads as they contain valuable and up-to-date information.

Creating a price suggestion

  1. Find the item you want to create a suggestion for. If the item has an existing price, you can find it in the pricelist. From there you can access the item's stats page.
  2. On the item's stats page, click Suggest a price.
  3. Select a currency. Your suggestion will remain based on this currency during price changes.
  4. Insert a new price. If necessary, make it a range with a low and high value. The calculated conversions of your chosen range will be shown to help you.

Gathering evidence

As mentioned in the warning at the top of the page, prices can't be changed just because you feel they should be. It is required that you gather evidence that supports your price suggestion in the form of links to trades which are shown to be well-received.

The general rule is that evidence gathered should be as fresh and plentiful as the item is popular. We are after the most common trade points of items. On currency items like keys, two or three trades made two weeks ago are not going to be sufficient to identify the most common trade point today. However, on an unusual or collector item with one sale in two or three months, it may be appropriate to price the item using a single sale that happened a month ago.

What counts as evidence?

The most common way of gathering evidence is to link to trade posts that other users have made that back up your new price suggestion. Almost any trading body can be used to back your suggestion up, such as:

Please remember that common trade points are defined by completed sales - not buyers or sellers. Our premium subscription and backpack comparison tools are very useful in identifying recent sales as well as for what the item was actually traded. You can also bookmark Classified listings and trade posts and make a suggestion after you see the item was traded. Yes, we allow suggestions based on sellers under our current listed price and buyers above our listed price. But we are really looking for changes that are relevant and meaningful, so please do your best to base suggestions around sales.

Things to keep in mind

Evidence must not be cherry-picked. If an item is easily selling at a price outside of your suggested range at the current time, you should seriously reconsider if your suggestion is valid. Your suggestion might end up being closed if wiser users opposing your suggestion point out a list of active trades well out of the range you suggested.

"Quickbuy" trades and buyouts (B/O) do not count towards evidence. Quickbuyers do not look for a specific item in particular. Buyout values are often unmet, and in most circumstances do not reflect the perceived value of the item.

Please remember that there will always be people selling for more or less than our suggested price, but we are after the most common trade point. Use common sense to guide you. If there is a buyer at 20.11 refined, please consider that 20.11 refined is unlikely the most common trade point for any given item. If you have one sale at 10 refined but there is an abundance of sellers at 9 refined, 10 refined probably is not a common trade point. Also please remember that we define outliers not by how fast something sells but how the sale relates to other sales and offers. If an item sells for 20 keys in a day but all other sales are at 21, 20 should not be considered a "quicksell" or an outlier.

Presentation

Compile all your evidence and decide on a reasonable range. Be sure to add the trade posts which support your new price range to the comments box of your price suggestion. Add in a brief summary or conclusion if you like. Submissions and comments on votes support BBCode, so take the time to make your suggestion look good if you need to list dozens of links that make up your evidence.

Submissions and comments on votes support BBCode, so take the time to make your suggestion look good if you need to list dozens of links that make up your evidence.

If you've compiled a decent amount of evidence and everything feels right, your suggestion is probably ready. Click Create Suggestion and let the community decide your submission's fate.

If you change your mind, you can close your suggestion at any time.