AWP Asiimov Price: The Skin With No Factory New and the Cleanest Lesson in Float

Every skin in CS2 carries a float cap defined by its creator: a minimum and a maximum float that bound every copy the game will ever generate. The Asiimov's minimum sits at 0.18, which lands inside the Field-Tested band (0.15–0.38). Factory New requires 0.00–0.07 and Minimal Wear requires 0.07–0.15. Neither is reachable.

This is a design decision, not an accident. The Asiimov's look depends on the orange-and-white panels showing scuffing — a pristine version would read as a different, blander skin. The artist set the floor deliberately.

The practical consequences are worth internalising. Any listing claiming a Factory New AWP Asiimov is either mislabelled or fraudulent, full stop. And within Field-Tested, the usable float range is 0.18–0.38 rather than the full 0.15–0.38, which compresses the spread between a good FT copy and a bad one. Our Factory New CS2 guide covers float caps in general; this skin is the canonical example.

Three tiers, all of them liquid, from the same refresh:

The total spread from top to bottom is narrow by CS2 standards — the Dragon Lore falls to 40% of its Factory New price by the time it reaches Battle-Scarred. The compression here is a direct consequence of the float cap: because every copy already starts at 0.18, the visual gap between the tiers is smaller than on a skin whose range starts at zero.

Here is what my tracker recorded for Field-Tested across nine snapshots:

From $110.69 to $81.67 is a 26% fall. Three days later it was back at $104.69. The 22-day change was −2.9%; the 22-day range was 35.5% — the widest range-to-change ratio in my entire 56-item basket.

Nothing happened to the Asiimov market. One seller listed well below the floor, my sampler caught it while the listing was live, someone bought it, and the floor returned to where it had been. If you had seen only the 13 August number you would have concluded the skin was collapsing. If you had been selling, you might have undercut a phantom.

You can sanity-check any suspicious listing against the median sale chart on the item's Steam Community Market page, which is sales-weighted and will not move for a single unsold listing.

This is the strongest argument I have for keeping price history rather than checking prices. The full write-up is on our CS2 skin price history page, and the build is on CS2 skin price tracker.

Within the 0.18–0.38 usable band, where a copy sits is genuinely visible. The Asiimov's large flat white panels are the least forgiving surface in the game for wear texture — there is nothing for scuffing to hide behind.

A 0.19 copy looks close to what the skin was designed to look like. A 0.37 copy looks like Well-Worn and is priced like Field-Tested, which makes it the worst buy on the ladder. Sellers know this, which is why high-float FT copies cluster near the listing floor.

My rule on this skin: if you are buying Field-Tested, read the float and stay under 0.25. If the only copies near the floor are 0.35+, buy Well-Worn instead and keep the difference — you are getting the same appearance for 24% less. Our float checking guide covers the tooling.

I am generally sympathetic to Battle-Scarred as a value play, and our page on battle scarred CS2 skins makes that case. The Asiimov is the exception that proves the rule.

Everything that makes Battle-Scarred work — dark bases, busy patterns, artwork that was never clean-looking — is absent here. The Asiimov is pale, high-contrast and dependent on crisp panel edges. At 0.6+ float the white sections go grey-brown and the orange loses its saturation, and the skin stops reading as an Asiimov at distance.

The $70.52 Battle-Scarred price is 70% of Field-Tested, which sounds like a discount until you compare against the tier you would actually buy instead. Well-Worn at $81.43 is only a little more and looks substantially better. That step is the best value on this entire ladder.

Across the same window, the Asiimov family performed close to the basket median of −5.6%: AWP Field-Tested −2.9%, AWP Well-Worn −4.7%, AWP Battle-Scarred −7.5%. The M4A4 version fell harder at −9.6% Field-Tested and −8.2% Well-Worn.

Worth noting the AWP-versus-M4A4 gap, because people conflate them. At the same refresh the M4A4 Asiimov Field-Tested listed at $207.78 against the AWP's $101.46 — the rifle version is substantially more expensive. Anyone searching "Asiimov price" and taking the first number they see will be wrong about half the time.

The bracket the Asiimov competes in is crowded, and the comparison is more useful than the absolute number. From the same refresh:

Two things stand out. The Asiimov Field-Tested was the steadiest item in this group over the window, losing less than the basket median while the Wildfire in Factory New lost nearly ten percent. And the Atheris at $4.00 is a reminder that recognisability, not quality, is what you pay for at $100 — the Atheris is a perfectly good-looking AWP skin costing 4% of the Asiimov.

If your goal is a blue-family loadout on a budget, the Atheris does that job. If your goal is the AWP skin that everyone in the server recognises instantly, there is one answer and it has been the same answer for a decade.

StatTrak versions exist and carry the usual premium — on the AK-47 Redline, StatTrak Field-Tested listed at $59.92 against $26.29 standard, a 2.28× multiple, and the Asiimov behaves similarly in direction if not in exact magnitude. On an AWP the counter is arguably more satisfying than on most weapons, since AWP kills are individually memorable.

Stickers applied to an Asiimov are a mixed proposition. The white panels are large and flat, which makes them excellent sticker real estate — but sticker value only survives if you never scrape, and scraped stickers are gone. Our page on selling CS2 skins covers how applied stickers affect resale, which is usually less than owners hope.

The AWP Asiimov occupies a specific and defensible position: it is the most recognisable AWP skin under $150, it has been recognisable for a decade, and its supply is not being actively expanded. That combination gives it a stability that flashier skins in the same price band lack.

Buy it if you want an AWP skin people will recognise, you are comfortable at around the $81.43–$101.46 mark, and you understand you are buying a play item rather than a position. Skip it if you were hoping for a clean copy — that copy does not exist and never will. For alternatives in the same bracket, our first CS2 skin buying guide covers budget AWP options, and the live price checker carries current spreads across everything we track.

1. Confirm which Asiimov. AWP and M4A4 versions differ by 85% in price. Read the full market hash name.
2. Read the float. Under 0.25 for Field-Tested; otherwise buy Well-Worn.
3. Compare Well-Worn against high-float Field-Tested. On this skin the $15 gap frequently buys nothing.
4. Distrust an unusually low listing. The 13 August data point above is what those look like, and they are usually gone before you finish deciding.
5. Check at least two venues. Steam's 15% combined fee is priced in and its balance cannot be cashed out. See our marketplace comparison.

Prices on this page are lowest live listings stamped with the date fetched and are subject to change — confirm on the marketplace before buying or selling. Our homepage carries the live board for every tracked item.

A genuinely good skin with a genuinely useful lesson attached. The float cap makes it the clearest illustration in the game of why the wear label on a listing tells you less than the number behind it, and the August listing artefact makes it the clearest illustration of why a single price check is not a price. Buy the Well-Worn if the Field-Tested floats are high, never buy Battle-Scarred here, and treat any Factory New listing as proof that something is wrong.