TF2 trading: metal, keys, holds, and the offers to refuse

TF2 trading is an exchange of backpack items between players. The goods are cosmetics, weapons, tools, and the metal you craft from unwanted weapons. The prices are community quotes. Valve’s crafting screen tells you how metal is made. It does not tell you what a hat is “worth” this week in keys. That second number lives on whatever public list you trust today, and it will be stale tomorrow.

This page stays on prices, keys, holds, and the shape of a bad offer. Betting those same items on a jackpot, a coin, or a match is the TF2 gambling guide, and that is the only place this article sends that subject. If you came here to size a pot, leave for that page. If you came here to understand a backpack quote, stay.

What this page covers

• The three metal names and the official craft counts.
• Keys as a moving unit, with no frozen dollar price.
• Holds, bans, and market fees as three different frictions.
• Impersonation and offers that are richer than the public list.

Write the item name down from the Steam trade window, then look it up fresh. A quote you cannot find on a list you opened today is a story, and stories are how a backpack trade goes wrong before any hold timer starts. The surrounding cluster is the CS:GO heritage topic. A settled round on this site is a different record from a hat quote, and you can recheck a settled round on the fairness page.

Metal is the crafted currency of the backpack. The names are scrap, reclaimed, and refined. The official Team Fortress Wiki crafting blueprints, the ones any premium account can open in the game, are the counts to memorize. Two weapons used by the same class smelt into one scrap. Three scrap combine into one reclaimed. Three reclaimed combine into one refined. The reverse blueprints smelt one refined into three reclaimed and one reclaimed into three scrap. A refined is therefore nine scrap if you only follow those combines, because three reclaimed are nine scrap. That identity is a craft recipe. It is not a promise that a trader will pay you nine scrap worth of hat for one refined on a given afternoon.

People still speak in refined the way other markets speak in a small bill. A quote of “a few refined” is a community sentence. Check it against a current list before you accept, because the list moves when a new cosmetic ships and when an old one falls out of fashion. Crafting also stamps a crafted item with a maker line you can clear in the backpack. That line is a label, not a price.

The craft ladder

• Scrap: two same-class weapons.
• Reclaimed: three scrap.
• Refined: three reclaimed.

If a stranger’s math needs a fourth metal name, you are no longer on the wiki blueprint. Ask them to point at the in-game recipe right now.

The Mann Co. Supply Crate Key is an official tool. In the game it opens a crate. In community trading it became a price unit because traders would rather say “two keys” than argue about a heap of metal. That habit is real. The number of keys a hat “is” today is not a law, and this page will not print a key-to-dollar figure or a key-to-refined figure. Both move. The in-game store price, the Community Market price, and the peer-trade quote are three different conversations, and the Market one is also shrunk by fees described on the Steam market fees page.

When you price an item, open a current community price list and read the range, not a single heroic number from a forum post last year. If the list shows a spread, the middle of the spread is still a quote, not a debt the other person owes you. A key you buy in the Mann Co. Store is a key. A key you receive in a player trade is the same item type only after it is actually in your backpack and the trade has finished. A screenshot of a key is not a key.

Before you treat keys as cash

• Read a list that was updated recently.
• Compare the peer quote with the Market quote after fees.
• Wait until the items are in your backpack before you trade them onward.

A key used as a gambling chip belongs in the gambling guide already linked above, and a price list still will not tell you the stake.

An unusual is a hat with a particle effect. Collectors pay more for some effects and some hats than for others, and they pay differently from one month to the next. There is no official table that says an effect equals a fixed pile of keys. Anyone who hands you such a table inside a chat window is handing you their number, not Valve’s. Use a current community list, then decide whether you like the hat enough to hold it if the quote falls.

The effect and the hat are one item in the trade window. Read both names. A cheap hat with a famous effect is not the famous hat, and a famous hat with a plain effect is not the famous effect. The trade window is the list that will actually move. A website that floats beside it can label the items however it likes. If the names in the Steam window and the names in the pitch do not match, stop and read the window again.

What to compare

• Hat name in the Steam trade window.
• Effect name in that same window.
• A current public quote for that pair, knowing the quote can move the same day.

Metal and keys are the units people use to express that quote. They are not a floor Valve guarantees. If the backpack is a hobby, keep the hobby smaller than the money you need for rent. If someone is pushing the hat as a wager, that conversation belongs on the gambling guide, not here.

A hold means Steam has accepted a trade and the items are not yours to send onward yet. Steam’s Trade and Market Holds FAQ is the published clock. The usual reason people meet it is Steam Guard: trades started without a Mobile Authenticator that has been on long enough can sit in a hold, and turning the authenticator on after the hold began does not erase that hold. The day counts and the edge cases live on the Steam trade hold page so this one does not restate the whole timer. Plan on the hold before you promise the item to a third person.

A Steam trade ban is a different lock. The account is refused trades, often the Community Market as well. A hold ends on a countdown. A ban is a penalty or a security block with its own length, including permanent ones Steam says it will not lift. Do not describe a ban as “just a hold” in order to calm someone into a second trade.

The Community Market is a third path. It sells for Steam Wallet funds and takes the fee stack on the Steam market fees page, commonly described there as about 15 percent on top of what the seller receives. A peer trade moves the items without that Market fee, and you still hold a backpack item rather than cash a bank will wire you. Wallet funds are not a bank withdrawal.

Three frictions, three names

• Hold: items wait, then arrive if the trade was real.
• Ban: the account cannot trade.
• Market fee: a cut on a listing, paid in wallet credit.

Quote a price only after you know which of the three you are standing in.

The scams that show up around TF2 trading are social, and this section names them so you can close the window. It does not describe how to build one. The pattern is impersonation. Someone copies a friend, a well-known trader, a Steam moderator, or a Valve employee. Steam staff will not ask you to trade an item to “verify” the account, and they will not move a deal into a third-party site that asks you to log in again. The login you trust is the Steam client you opened yourself.

The other pattern is the offer that is too good. A hat, a key stack, or an unusual priced far under every current public list is not a secret wholesale desk. It is the bait. The item in the actual trade window may be a different hat, a duped story, or nothing, while the pitch site shows the expensive one. Compare the window, item by item, and decline when the window is poorer than the pitch.

Refuse and leave

• Ignore profiles that mimic a friend or a staff role.
• Ignore deals that beat the public list by a silly margin.
• Never type a password or a Steam Guard code into a page a chat link opened.

If you already sent items to a fake window, use Steam’s account-recovery tools and stop sending more. Revenge trades and “recovery services” that ask for the rest of the backpack are a second impersonation. The fairness page on this site checks a game round. It cannot rewind a Steam trade.

A trading quote answers what the community paid recently for a hat, a key, or a pile of metal. A wager answers who wins a pot. Those sentences use the same backpack and then diverge. Once an item is a chip on a third-party site, you have left pricing and entered gambling, including the Subscriber Agreement issues and the bot risk that the gambling guide already covers. Read that guide once, on purpose, and do not look for staking advice in the metal table above.

If you only wanted the craft counts, you already have them: two weapons to a scrap, three scrap to a reclaimed, three reclaimed to a refined. If you wanted a live key price, go to a list that updates, because this article refuses to freeze one. If the items are sitting in a hold, read the hold guide and Steam’s FAQ before you promise them. If the account cannot trade at all, read the ban guide. If you are comparing a Market listing with a peer offer, subtract the fee in your head using the fees guide, then decide.

A last pass

• Metal names follow the wiki blueprints.
• Key and unusual prices follow a current list, not this page.
• Holds, bans, and fees are three different delays or cuts.
• Betting the items is the other guide.

The CS:GO heritage topic is the shelf these pages share. Treat the backpack as a hobby you can walk away from. 18+ if the next click is a stake rather than a trade.