CS2 float values explained: wear brackets, caps and the vanilla knife myth
Every skin gets a float value between 0.00 and 1.00 the moment it is created - unboxed, dropped or traded up - and it never changes afterwards. Skins do not wear with use; a 2014 Factory New is exactly as clean today. Lower float = less visible wear.
| WEAR | FLOAT RANGE | WORTH KNOWING |
|---|---|---|
| Factory New | 0.00 - 0.07 | The premium bracket. On some finishes (Crimson Web) only a sliver of the possible range qualifies. |
| Minimal Wear | 0.07 - 0.15 | A 0.0700 MW looks near-identical to a 0.0699 FN and costs a chunk less. Boundary shopping is a real strategy. |
| Field-Tested | 0.15 - 0.38 | The widest bracket - a 0.16 and a 0.37 are both "FT" and can look wildly different. Always check the number, not the label. |
| Well-Worn | 0.38 - 0.45 | The narrowest bracket, often oddly priced because supply is thin. |
| Battle-Scarred | 0.45 - 1.00 | Floats near 0.99 ("float collecting") have their own collector market. |
Per-skin float caps
Most skins cannot roll the whole 0-1 range - each has a min and max float cap. The AWP Asiimov's minimum is 0.18, so a Factory New or Minimal Wear Asiimov does not exist. Doppler knives cap at 0.00-0.08, so every Doppler is FN or MW. The UMP-45 Grand Prix exists only in Field-Tested. The XM1014 VariCamo Blue never gets uglier than 0.50 no matter what the label says.
The vanilla knife myth
You will hear that vanilla (unpainted) knives "have float 0". False - vanillas roll a float like everything else (a vanilla Talon spans 0.06-0.80). The truth is better: with no paint, the float has zero visual effect, so a Battle-Scarred vanilla looks identical to a Factory New one and trades accordingly. The only knives where the float genuinely does not matter.
