Rarity: the quality grades of CS2 skins
Rarity: Rarity is the quality grade Counter-Strike 2 gives every item. For weapon skins it runs from Consumer Grade to Covert. The game shows it as a colour, and case odds are published grade by grade.
Weapon skin grades
From most common to rarest: Consumer Grade, Industrial Grade, Mil-Spec Grade, Restricted, Classified and Covert.
The game file lists a seventh grade after Covert: Contraband, with a colour of its own.
Knives and gloves
Knives and gloves carry a ★ before their name. Knives are graded Covert, like the rarest weapon skins: the Steam Market lists them as “★ Covert Knife”. Gloves are graded Extraordinary.
In a case, knives and gloves don’t count in the Covert row: together they make up the “rare special item ★”, which has odds of its own.
Agent grades
Agents have their own four-step scale: Distinguished, Exceptional, Superior and Master. Each step uses the colour of a weapon grade, from Mil-Spec Grade blue to Covert red.
One colour per grade
Each grade has its colour in the game’s items_game.txt file, from Consumer Grade grey to Covert red. Items of the same level share it, whether weapon, gloves or agent: Covert, Extraordinary and Master are the same red.
Rarity and case odds
For weapon cases opened with a key, Perfect World, the official operator of Counter-Strike in China, publishes odds for each grade: the higher the grade, the lower the odds. The same page says every item within a grade has the same chance. The table below gives those odds, which every case page shows as well.
Rarity and price
Rarity doesn’t set a skin’s price. For prices, the rankings below list skins of the same grade and agents, each with its cheapest listing and the time it was recorded.
Grades and their colours
Names and colours read from the game files. This page shows no prices.
| Grade (in-game name) | Colour |
|---|---|
| Weapon skins | |
| Consumer Grade | #b0c3d9 |
| Industrial Grade | #5e98d9 |
| Mil-Spec Grade | #4b69ff |
| Restricted | #8847ff |
| Classified | #d32ce6 |
| Covert | #eb4b4b |
| Contraband | #e4ae39 |
| Knives ★ | |
| Covert | #eb4b4b |
| Gloves ★ | |
| Extraordinary | #eb4b4b |
| Agents | |
| Distinguished | #4b69ff |
| Exceptional | #8847ff |
| Superior | #d32ce6 |
| Master | #eb4b4b |
Drop odds by rarity
| Rarity | Odds |
|---|---|
| Mil-Spec Grade | 79.923% |
| Restricted | 15.985% |
| Classified | 3.197% |
| Covert | 0.639% |
| Rare special item ★ (knife or gloves) | 0.256% |
Source: “概率公示” page on csgo.com.cn, dated 11/09/2017, read on 29/09/2026.
Sources
Before you pay, read what to check on the listing. And to see how much the same skin’s price moves from one marketplace to the next: the price gap index.