What Are the Real Odds of Getting a Rare Item in CS2?

Players love opening cases, and a high percentage of them do it to get a rare skin such as a Karambit Blue Gem, an M4A4 Howl, Pandora Box Sport Gloves or even an AK-47 Case Hardened #661 with a millionaire price tag… but is it a good idea at all?

To answer this question, we have created this guide, where we will go over the real CS:GO case opening odds of getting a rare CS:GO (CS2) skin, so you can see for yourself if it’s worth it.

Before we dive deep into the real odds of getting a rare skin in CS:GO, we need to understand how CS:GO case opening works and the chances behind it. 

When opening a CS:GO case, you have the following odds:

• Rare / Mil-Spec (Blue): 79.92%
• Mythical / Restricted (Purple): 15.98%
• Legendary / Classified (Pink): 3.20%
• Ancient / Covert (Red): 0.64%
• Exceedingly Rare Special (Gold): 0.26%

And we talk about “rare” skins, we refer to knives, gloves and the like, and such are part of the “Exceedingly Rare Special (Gold) category. Therefore, just based on this, we can say the odds of getting a rare item by opening CS:GO cases is only 0.26%, which is approximately 1 in 391 cases you open.

Along with these odds, we have also have the odds for the float value, which determines the wear and tear of the skin – here you have all the information you need:

• Factory New (0.00 to 0.07): 3%
• Minimal Wear (0.07 to 0.15): 24%
• Field-Tested (0.15 to 0.38): 33%
• Well-Worn (0.38 to 0.45): 24%
• Battle-Scarred (0.45 to 1.00): 16%

Therefore, as you can see, it’s even harder to get a rare skin with a low float value… making them a lot more expensive than the same rare skin with a high float value.

Let’s compare the odds of getting a gold rated skin with a float value of 0.50 and the same skin with a float value of 0.05:

• Battle Scarred rare skin: You stand a chance of 0.040912% or 1 in 2,444
• Factory New rare skin: You stand a chance of 0.007671% or 1 in 13,037

As you can see, you’re 5x times more likely to get a gold-rated skin with a high float value than a skin with a low float value, such as a Factory New. And it’s important to consider these details, because it allows you to see the reality of case opening, and how hard it is to get a pretty valuable and rare skin as a drop.

Now that we have checked what the CS GO case opening odds are, it’s time to talk about your chances of dropping a rare and highly valuable skin in CS:GO. To do this, we will pick the AK-47 Case Hardened with the pattern #661 as an example, because it can be worth approximately $1M if it meets the following features:

• Factory New (low float value)
• Pattern #661
• StatTrak

Now, let’s put it all together, to understand how likely you’re to get this exquisite and exotic skin by opening CS:GO cases.

A AK-47 Case Hardened #661 (Factory New) StatTrak has the following features:

• It has a Case Hardened Finish: 1 in 13
• It is rated as a Rare Drop: 1 in 391
• It has a pattern #661: 1 in 999
• It StatTrak rated: 1 in 10
• It is Factory New: 3 in 100

If we put it all together, we stand a chance of 0.000000592% of getting such a rare skin, which is the same as 1 in 16,887,450,000.

You can easily see that it’s very very very hard to drop such a rare skin by opening CS:GO cases, hence why the recently-listed AK-47 Case Hardened #661 (Factory New) and StatTrak rated has been valued at $800,000 to $1,000,000, because it’s absurdly hard to get.

It is currently rivaling another gem of a rare skin available nowadays, the Karambit Blue Gem with the pattern #381, which is valued at $1,200,000 to $1,500,000. And the chances of getting such skin are also similar.

This is why we like to be 100% honest and transparent with you, so you can look into CS:GO case opening objectively, to help you see if it’s a good idea or not to invest your money into opening crates to get the skins you want.

It depends on several factors such as your budget, reasons to open cases and the skin you want to get. 

If you’re doing it just for fun, and hence you don’t mind using $50-100 to see “what happens”, it’s totally fine to go ahead and open CS:GO cases, because it’s fun and you can end up winning a very rare and expensive skin.

On the other hand, if you want to venture into CS:GO case opening because you’re 100% sure you will hit it big, we invite you to consider it twice, because there are no guarantees. It works just like gambling, you can win big… or you can spend a lot of money and get nothing in return.

If you want to open CS:GO cases to win a rare skin, you need a plan, which is assigning a bankroll of disposable income, and picking a case that will bring you at least 100 openings, because it’s the only way by which you can increase your chances of landing a big win. And if you can afford at least 391 opens, even better.

For example, if you have $1,300 of disposable income you’d like to use for opening cases to see if you land a big win, we can recommend the Kilowatt Case, which is cheap at $3.32 and it offers a ROI of 72% at the time of writing this article.

In this case, with $1,300 you can afford to open the Kilowatt Case 391 times, which brings you enough opportunities to get a rare drop such as a Case Hardened Knife, which if it has a low float value, can easily pay for the price of opening the cases and some more.

Since it offers a ROI of 72%, you can expect to get back at least $936, so you’d be spending $364 to see if you can win a rare item.

This is how you need to look at CS:GO case opening to make it worth it. Otherwise, if you just open cases mindlessly, without objectively looking at the stats and following a plan, you’re far more likely to get nothing good in return.

Now that you have the facts at your disposal, you can easily judge if it’s worth it for you to open cases or not.

It’s also important to note you don’t necessarily need to open cases in-game, as you can save yourself the expense of buying keys, by buying them at third-party sites like CSGOLuck.

And another major advantage of opening CS:GO cases at third-party sites is you can open custom cases, which can only contain the skins that interest you, thus increasing your chances of getting your preferred drop. And since they also use a Random Number Generator, or a Provably Fair system, you can rest assured the outcomes are 100% random, fair and verifiable.

Now that you know all about case opening, be it in-game or at third party sites, you can decide if you should start opening cases, or if you’re better off buying the skins you want from the Steam Marketplace or from a third-party trading site.

CS:GO case opening is pretty popular because it follows the same mechanism as gambling: you bet money with the hopes of getting a more valuable prize, which instead of stakes or jackpots, it is a rare and valuable skin. 

If you look at the mechanics of case opening, it’s similar to playing online slots. You buy a case and also a key to open it, and once you unlock it, it will spin a reel with a selector that will determine what skin you will win.

Furthermore, CS:GO case opening uses a 100% random number generator, which has been audited by governments like the Chinese government, which have successfully verified it’s a totally random process.

Therefore, all of these elements make CS:GO case opening such a popular activity amongst players, and it’s reflected on several stats such as 1.2M+ cases being opened every day, and that it has generated over $1B USD to Valve in 2023.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt CS:GO case opening is massively popular and also a lot of fun, but it’s indeed very hard to get a rare item, with the standard odds being as low as 0.26%… and even lower if you want a truly exceptional skin. But this is how it works, and now that you are aware of the pros and cons, you can decide yourself if it’s worth it or not to open cases to get the skins you want.