I just got premium--I think I bought a cozy camper on sale or something.
Now I can trade! And have hextuple inventory space! YAY!
No more throwing out of my meager promotional hat stash to hold weapons!
OH MAN THAT HURTS MY MONEY SENSE!
Checking the wiki, the value of a Cozy Camper IN THE STORE is 9.99. I don't know what the sale reduced the item's price to. This is a complete ripoff.
Here's what you could've done: Bought a single key for 2.50, I don't know if there was a sale on them or not I never check. This would have endowed premium status to you.
Gone to
http://scrap.tf/ and sold the key there for 3.22 refined metal.
Then take that metal, and turn right around and buy a cozy camper and any other item for 1 scrap at Scrap.tf, which is 1/9 of a single refined metal. The value of a Cozy Camper, you see, is 1/2 of a scrap. It's not worthless, but pretty damn close.
So you could've gotten one very easily, and had 3.11 refined and an extra item leftover to buy hats or any other items you might fancy.
Just remember, UNIQUE quality weapons, that is, normal weapons that have no special prefixes or qualities, are usually this price because they are dropped and can be crafted for. They're nigh-worthless because the market is flooded with them, and the law of supply and demand fixes them at this price because the very least you can use them for is making scrap metal, which has inherent value in crafting.
Just remember
http://scrap.tf/ is good for just normal hum-drum items, and if have an item (like a hat or a strange or something) that you're ABSOLUTELY NOT SURE what the trading value of it is, and someone's trying to get it off you, check
http://backpack.tf/ cause the market is both very fickle, and full of people not afraid to take advantage of people that don't know what they're doing. Through remember one thing: Backpack.tf is a price guide, not a price law. It's ok to haggle a bit and so long as it doesn't deviate very far from what the site says is sane, you should be good. As is in all things, using your intuition is key.
It just hurts me to see people spending money, good money in such a grossly inefficient way.
In other news, while I spend so much time learning about trading and the TF2 economy, there's actually very little that I want. Except for one thing: I gathered up my resources, sold my Snapped Pupil for 1.33 ref, and I went to
http://www.tf2outpost.com/ to find a seller for this one item I want. After a bit of haggling I got a
Cosa Nostra Cap for 1.77 ref!
Goddamn is this just snazziest hat in existence or what? The spy was BORN to wear this hat. While I may fail epically at TF2 on occasion, I will always like damn good while doing it.