Reviewed 22 September 2026
Trade-up contracts: the collection mix and float caps decide the result
Feed in ten skins of a single rarity and you receive one skin from the tier above. The collection mix picks which skin it is, and float caps limit how good it can look.
How the standard contract runs: ten inputs, one result
The usual contract consumes ten items sharing one rarity and returns one item a rarity higher. Those ten can come from different collections, and each collection you include raises its odds of supplying the output.
Feed it ten Classified skins from The Phoenix Collection and the Covert that comes back is the Phoenix covert, the AWP Asiimov. Throw in skins from other collections and the covert may come from one of those.
A separate contract showed up in drop trackers in October 2025: five Covert skins in, with a knife or gloves as a possible result. Check the current recipe in the client itself. Valve has altered contracts before, and a line on a wiki is not the button you are about to press.
The output float is remapped, not copied
The result is not a plain average of the input floats. First each input is converted to its relative position inside its own window. Those positions are averaged, and the average is mapped into the output skin's window. With a cap of 0.18 to 1.00, a skin never comes out Factory New, whatever the quality of the inputs.
A common move is loading a Phoenix contract with low-float AK-47 Redline copies in the hope of a Factory New Asiimov. Because its window starts at 0.18, the ceiling is a low Field-Tested.
Downside: the expensive part was the Redlines, and they paid for an outcome the finish cannot deliver. Look up the output skin's float cap before buying inputs.
Questions
Can a trade-up create a Factory New AWP Asiimov?
No. Its float window opens at 0.18, inside Field-Tested, and the trade-up result is remapped into that window.
Do all ten trade-up skins need to be from one collection?
No. Collections can be mixed, and the odds of each output collection follow the inputs you supplied.
