The CS:GO skins are purely cosmetic. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what determines a price. There is the rarity aspect, e.g. a typical handgun is only a few cents while the lowest of knives is $50 or more. Beyond that there are "StatTrak" versions of each skin that visibly show confirmed kills on the weapon. Neat, but purely cosmetic. Those skins are usually several multiples of the regular version of the skin. Those factors will effect the price, but two comparable skins based on those factors will have drastically different prices.

Fads and scarcity! StatTrak versions of skins drop less than those without. Then patterns that people like. I haven't checked CSGO skin sites for awhile but normally multi-colored "fade" skins will all-blue patterns were very popular about a a year ago. How beat up the skin is determined by a number between 0.00 (best) and 1 (worst), so skins with a very low or very high "float" are apparently more desirable.

> colored "fade" skins will all-blue patterns were very popular about a a year ago

Yeah, that appears to be the case. I unboxed a +$300 M9 Bayonet the other week. I think it looks pretty shitty, but hey, who can complain when you can resell it? I kinda get the impression that folks just kinda jump on the bandwagon on certain skins at this point, that they desire to have something valuable rather than something they think looks good.

Wow, so in a fast paced FPS people have time to worry about how their gun looks?! I'm getting old.

It's all about showing off. Who has the most expensive skins, coolest looking skins, etc. I have a buddy I play with, he'll drop $100 on a skin on the secondary market and loves it when someone gets all bent out of shape because he has such nice/valuable items.

Others in the thread have touched on this, but this is definitely ensnaring naive, young kids into gambling and taking risks with expensive items. Seems at least once a week I'll be in a match wherein a prepubescent kid will tell his team how he gambled away $100 worth of skins, or got scammed by a "friend" in some kind of gambling pool. Folks also are constantly trying to trade-up, to convince someone to take a skin with less value for one of greater value. I personally unboxed a +$300 knife skin, and at least once a day I get some telling me some sob story, trying to get me to trade it for whatever shit they have to offer.

I was so glad when Valve finally let you set your Steam Inventory to private (or friends only), as for a while I got a random friend invite or message from a stranger wanting me to give them my TF2 hats.

The best part of that was how many of them wanted me to just give them my hats rather than trade anything for it, given my somewhat low playing stats I guess they assumed I was dumb enough not to realize the trading value of one hat in particular (which I actually do wear when I randomly play TF2, so hah). So many "Hey, I see you haven't played TF2 in a while. I like your hats, would you give them to me as I play TF2 a lot and want to look cool" messages...

Again, glad that my Steam Inventory is now private and I don't see that any more.

Hell, my problem is just people spec'ing me in game and asking me to either make a lopsided trade or, as you mentioned, just go give it to them. I think I got at least a dozen friend requests from strangers the day I unboxed my M9 on a maxed out casual server.

Everyone who purchases Counter Strike has access to all the weapons when they play. There is no need to unlock any waepons with real money.

The things that people are buying with the "micro"-transactions are weapon "skins", which customize the ingame appearance of the weapons.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/counterstrike/Portal:Weapons