TF2 Currency Explained: Keys, Refined Metal and What “Pure” Actually Means

TF2 currency is built on the in-game crafting recipes, which is the whole reason it holds together. You can always smelt a refined into three reclaimed and always combine three reclaimed back into a refined. The exchange rate is not a convention traders agreed on — it is enforced by the game.

One refined is nine scrap, or eighteen craft weapons. That is why prices land on odd-looking decimals: 0.11 is one scrap, 0.33 is one reclaimed, 0.66 is two reclaimed, 0.88 is eight scrap. Nothing is rounded to tenths, because nine does not divide into ten.

The key sits above all of it. Valve sells Mann Co. Supply Crate Keys in the Mann Co. Store at a fixed dollar price, so a key is the closest thing TF2 has to a hard-currency anchor. Its price *in metal*, though, is set entirely by the community and drifts constantly.

Every long-term TF2 trader eventually notices the same thing: quoted in refined, keys get more expensive almost every year. In 2011 a key was worth a couple of ref. It has since climbed past sixty. This is not hype, and it is not a bubble — it is a supply mechanic.

• Metal is inflationary. Weapons drop free to every player who plays. Two weapons craft into a scrap, and metal essentially never leaves the economy — nothing consumes it at scale.
• Keys are deflationary. A key enters the economy only when someone pays Valve real money for it, and it is *destroyed* the moment it opens a crate. Supply is bought in and burned off constantly.
• The dollar anchor holds. Because Valve keeps the store price fixed, the key does not inflate against real money the way metal inflates against everything.

The practical consequence is that “the key price went up” and “the key price went down” usually mean different things depending on which side of the trade you are on. In metal, keys trend up. In dollars, keys are roughly flat and occasionally soften when third-party sellers dump supply.

“Pure” means keys and refined metal, and nothing else. When a listing says *“12 keys pure only”*, the seller is telling you they do not want your spare Australium, your three unusuals or your backpack of stranges. They want currency they can immediately spend.

The alternative is overpay — items offered on top of, or instead of, pure. Overpay is not free money. It is inventory, and inventory is work: you now have to price it, list it, answer messages about it and eventually sell it. That is why experienced traders routinely value item overpay at somewhere between 60% and 80% of its own paper price.

A hat “worth” 10 keys that takes you four months to move was never worth 10 keys to you. It was worth whatever a reseller would have paid on day one.

None of this means overpay is bad. If someone offers you items you were going to buy anyway, taking overpay is genuinely profitable. The mistake is treating a backpack.tf suggested price as cash equivalence when it is nothing of the sort.

Because the smallest tradeable unit of metal is a scrap, and a craft weapon is worth half a scrap, exact prices sometimes need a weapon to settle. This is completely normal and nobody will think it is strange if you add one.

If you are ever short by a scrap, offer the weapon. If you are over by a scrap, ask for it back. Both are routine. What is not routine is a seller who keeps “finding” new rounding in their favour mid-trade — see our guide to the scams that still work.

Never take the rate from one place. Keys are quoted differently depending on whether you are buying with metal, buying with cash or cashing out, and the gap between those numbers is where most beginners lose value.

1. backpack.tf for the community key price in refined. This is the number other traders will quote at you.
2. The Steam Community Market for the dollar price. Remember Steam takes roughly 15% off the top, so the seller receives noticeably less than the sticker price, and receives it as locked wallet funds.
3. A third-party store’s live buy and sell prices — including our own TF2 market — for what someone will actually pay you today, in money you can withdraw.

The spread between those three numbers is the real cost of moving between metal, wallet funds and cash. We broke that arithmetic down in full in where your money actually goes.

If you expect to buy something within a week, hold metal — you avoid two conversions and the spread that comes with them. If your horizon is months, keys have historically been the better store of value for exactly the supply reasons above.

But be honest about what you are doing. Holding keys is a bet that Valve does not change the store price and that crate-opening demand holds up. Holding metal is a bet against a faucet that has never once been turned off. Neither is a savings account, and neither should hold money you actually need.