User:NicoMun/Team Fortress 2

Item Qualities
Items in Team Fortress 2 all have a "quality" represented by a change in the item name's color and often a title appearing before the item's name. Certain qualities can influence an item's value dramatically and are granted based on the item's origin.

Normal & Unique
The Normal and Unique qualities provide no prefix. These are the default qualities for items, with Normal being granted to all weapons characters have by default. The Unique quality changes the item's name to yellow. These qualities are considered the baseline for the item and mark its lowest price.

Vintage
Vintage items are granted the "Vintage" prefix and a blue name. Items obtained before the Mann-Conomy Update of 2010 were given this tag to mark their age. In March 15th, 2011, certain items were made easier to obtain through crafting, and items created using the old method were granted the Vintage quality to distinguish them. This quality adds a variable amount of

Unusual
Unusual items are generally the most expensive and sought after items in Team Fortress 2. This quality grants the item a purple name, and a particle effect that varies between a pool of available effects. This quality can appear on cosmetics, taunts, and weapons, and each have one of 221 effects. Due to the wide range of items that can have the Unusual quality and high number of effects, a specific unusual item is often exceedingly rare, and desirable combinations of effects and items can be upwards of $10,000. These items are only obtained by using a Crate Key for a random item, which has a 0.66% chance of having the Unusual quality.

Earbuds
On June 10th, 2010, the Mac Update was released, and with it Team Fortress 2 became available for OS X operating systems. To commemorate the event, every account that opened Team Fortress 2 on OS X prior to August 16th of 2010 with a set of virtual Earbuds. These items were cosmetic and held no value until the Mann-Conomy Update released on September 10th, 2010, which opened a virtual economy and allowed players to trade items. Players developed a bartering-based economy by using Crate Keys as a currency for trading. This item is always worth $2.50 from the in-game store and only obtainable through purchase or trades made with other players.

At the time, players were limited to only being able to trade 8 items per player at a time, which meant that a player trading 8 keys to another would only trade $20 worth of items while items could be worth thousands of keys. Traders looked towards Earbuds as a new form of currency, due to their nature as a limited-time item that would not be produced again. Because their value was based on community perception and not tied to a dollar amount like Crate Keys, their value fluctuated based on community perception, but is estimated to have been as high as 30 Crate Keys, or $75. A third-party website, backpack.tf, used community suggestions to post estimated prices of various items. As buds became a mainstream currency, backpack.tf began pricing items in the currency of Earbuds.

In 2011, the trading system was updated to remove the 8-item limit. This removed the main use for Earbuds in the economy, as players no longer needed a high-value currency. As the price of Earbuds was high primarily due to community use as a currency, the price of Earbuds declined as users sold them for lower prices to sell them before they lost more value. As of March 31st, 2015, backpack.tf removed Earbud pricing, only showing prices in Crate Keys and crafting metals. This event caused panic selling across the market, with players selling their Earbuds for low prices to prevent further losses. causing the price to crash down to $5. As of October 1st, 2022, their price has risen to $12, but are no longer used as a form of currency.