Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2

105 ratings
Scams that aren't so obvious
By ConicalG
A guide to shed a light on the lesser known or less noticeable scam techniques scammers use in trading including similar items, spells, effects and confusing item names.
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The Lucky No. 42
This is a promotional item from summer 2011.Scammers use it, because it has 2 variants - craftable and non-craftable. The craftable version is much more rare which makes it more expensive. (As of writing this, Non-craftable is ~6 keys while craftable is 30 keys).
The Non-craftable price
The craftable price


How it goes
The scam starts with you receiving a trade offer that looks generous with the trade message claiming that the person sending you the offer is overpaying and links the backpack page to the craftable version of the item while the trade offer contains the cheaper non-craftable version.
Sharpened Volcano Fragment
This scam is quite uncommon but it still happens. Besides the Collector's, Genuine and Vintage, there is also an non-craftable version of this weapon which is very rare and expensive.
Price of the uncraftable version.

Price of the normal weapon (0.5 scrap, nothing special).




How it goes
Incase you own one of these non-craftable ones, you might recieve a trade offer with your Sharpened Volcano Fragment hidden between other weapons so you don't notice or even know its true value. There are also a few other items that have a much more expensive non-craftable version, mostly cosmetics. Always check prices before trading, the smallest detail can change an item's value.
The Festivizer/Industrial Festivizer
A scam that is based off the person not being well-informed about hats and tools in TF2.



This is a Festivizer. It's used to add christmas lights to certain weapons and weapons skins. It's priced around a key.


This is the Industrial Festivizer. It's a craft hat for engineer. It's priced at 1.33 ref (a craft hat).

How it goes
The scam starts with you being offered a "festivizer" while the scammer hopes that you won't notice it not being a festivizer but an Industrial Festivizer in its place.
Festive/Festivized items
A festive weapon is a weapon that could be unboxed, a festivized weapon is a weapon which had the "festive" part added with a Festivizer.

This is a festive medi gun. It was unboxed and is much more expensive than a festivized version.

This is a festivized medi gun. It was crafted with a festivizer and is much cheaper than an actual festive weapon.




How it goes
You are offered a FESTIVIZED weapon with the trade message claiming it is a festive one. They might also link the price of the festive version to mislead you further.
Community Market description scams
UPDATE: As of 15. December 2022, fake spell descriptions no longer show up on the market.

This one I have reported to Valve in hopes of them doing something about it (hopefully removing descriptions on the Community Market). It's another scam preying upon newer or inexperienced traders.

FAKE
These two are obvious fakes to players that know how descriptions work, however they still pop up on the market if someone searches for the specific attributes that are faked on these weapons.

REAL
Real effects, spells and attributes will show up in colored text. They will never be written with plain white text, those are always descriptions.
A few things you should always keep in mind while trading
  • Nobody is going to pay you to advertise their website, it's a scam.
  • Valve will never contact you through friend requests and steam messages OR discord.
  • You will never have to "scan" or "validate" your items. DO NOT trade your items to anyone.
  • Never log into any website that someone sends you. If a friend sends a link that's suspicious, they might have had their account stolen.
  • Always double check your trades, use backpack[backpack.tf].
  • There are no such things as "pending reports", "false reports" and "steam admins", someone is trying to steal your account.
  • If your name or profile image ever change on their own, change your passwords everywhere, it's not Steam, it's someone who has access to a leaked database and has your password and email combination.
  • Never trust anyone. Only do direct trades.
Conclusion
Stay safe, double check all your trades, don't log into random websites, change your password regularly, don't trust anyone, especially people who are "generous" with their offers. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Take care.
41 Comments
CopperCultist 16 Jun, 2022 @ 1:14am 
darn
ConicalG  [author] 27 Nov, 2021 @ 9:24am 
Next 3 people to comment their trade url get Tough Stuff Muffs.
liquid 27 Nov, 2021 @ 8:03am 
Thank you for this guide!
Neapolitan Dynamite 27 Nov, 2021 @ 5:25am 
I had someone somehow get me to vote for their competetive TF2 team online, which lead to my account being signed into, me not noticing because colleges keep spamming my Email (Thanks a lot higher education), and damn near EVERYTHING I owned being sold to trade bots, while a second, currently deleted account used the account to give them all the earned keys from trading. I lost my golden Force-A-Nature through this. I no longer read my steam DMs either. BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING ONLINE FOLKS
The Perfect Baller [THs] 26 Nov, 2021 @ 9:00pm 
If i only had this 2 months ago, I was scammed for two ausies with a Lucky 42..
Demon 26 Nov, 2021 @ 2:09pm 
I still think it’s unreal I managed to get an unusual Rancho Relaxo taunt for literally NOTHING out of the kindness of a random dude I was nice to in an MVM server.

I am not kidding, he just gave it to me “because he had another one“!

I swear, my paranoia rose since that day and I have treasured all my digital belongings like a dragon with it’s gold!

Stay safe out there guys, not everyone is as pleasant as the guy I met!
🧿 26 Nov, 2021 @ 10:39am 
I checked the Steam Community Market and some guy is adding the Spell description to EVEN newer items. what trash, I hope no one falls for that stuff