Gold Arabesque AK-47 in CS2: rarity, float, Souvenirs and origin

The AK-47 | Gold Arabesque is the only Covert skin in the 2021 Dust 2 Collection, which Valve released with Operation Riptide in September 2021. Gold Arabesque copies exist in normal and Souvenir quality but never as StatTrak, and despite the name the skin has nothing to do with the Arabesque Collection added in July 2026. This guide sets out what Valve's game files and announcements say about where it comes from and what to check before you trade one.

Gold Arabesque at a glance

The float range covers all five exteriors, from Factory New to Battle-Scarred, but the most worn copy possible stops at 0.70 instead of 1.00. Below the AK-47 sit two Classified skins, the UMP-45 | Fade and the SSG 08 | Death Strike, and three Restricted ones: the MAC-10 | Case Hardened, M4A4 | Red DDPAT and USP-S | Orange Anolis.

Design and the Booth line

Valve's description says an intricate design has been hand painted on the stock and handguard, and the metal painted gold with filigree accents. The flavour text asks: "What other tricks does Booth have up his sleeve?" Booth is the arms dealer of CS:GO's operation stories. In Operation Bloodhound's mission lines, Valeria Jenner warns that he "plays both sides".

The game files class the finish as Gunsmith, the style that combines patina with custom paint. Valve's Riptide page credits Workshop artists such as SAZ and Graff next to other skins in the same collection, but names no artist for the AK-47.

How to get the Gold Arabesque

Valve's files and posts show three routes into the game.

Operation Riptide's star shop. Riptide started on September 21, 2021, and Valve scheduled it to run until February 20, 2022. Pass holders earned stars from weekly missions and spent them in the Operation Shop. In Valve's item files, the 2021 Dust 2 Collection cost 4 stars and opened into one random skin from the whole collection, so the shop never sold the AK-47 on its own. The 2021 Train Collection, by contrast, was sold by grade, with a Covert at 100 stars. Our Operation Riptide article covers the rest of the operation.

Trade-up contracts. Valve's contract takes 10 items of the same grade and returns one item a grade higher, from a collection of one of the inputs. Ten Classified skins from this collection can therefore only produce a Gold Arabesque. Since a May 2026 update, Souvenir copies of those Classifieds count as inputs too: their Souvenir attributes are stripped and the result is a normal item. The trade-up guide explains the float formula.

Souvenir packages. Dust II packages drew on this collection at six Majors:

Paris 2023 and Copenhagen 2024 had no Dust II package. Dust II packages from 2014 to 2019 are no help either: a package uses the newest version of its map's collection at the time it was added, which for those events was the older Dust 2 Collection.

Souvenir versions and the Cologne 2026 change

For Stockholm 2021, Valve said Souvenirs would "feature gold stickers of the teams and map of the match", so a Souvenir's stickers tell you which game it came from. At Austin 2025 and Budapest 2025, playoff matches got Souvenir Highlight Packages instead, and the weapon inside comes with a Souvenir Charm carrying a video highlight from that match.

Cologne 2026 changed the rules again. There were no packages. Valve's Souvenir-O-Matic let players take "any normal or Souvenir quality weapon" from their inventory, pick a completed match and one of its players, and get the weapon back as a Souvenir with gold team, autograph and map stickers. Any stickers already on it were removed first, and the price depended on demand for those stickers and on the weapon's rarity.

That has two consequences for this skin. A normal copy from the Riptide shop or a trade-up could become a Cologne 2026 Souvenir carrying a player's autograph. And an older Souvenir could be converted too, losing its original match stickers. Valve said the Cologne 2026 Shop would stay open until September 29, 2026. The Souvenir packages guide covers every era and the drop odds.

Gold Arabesque vs the Arabesque Collection

On July 8, 2026, Valve added the Arabesque Collection to the Armory, made from Workshop entries to a call for Arabesque art and Arabian mythology. Its AK-47 is the Covert AK-47 | Consequence of the Jinn, and it also holds the MAC-10 | Arabesque Mosaic.

The older AK-47 is not part of it. It stays in the 2021 Dust 2 Collection, so an Armory redemption of the Arabesque Collection can't produce one, and a collection filter set to Arabesque won't show it. Our Arabesque and Spy Tech article lists the newer set in full.

Before you trade one

• Read the quality. Normal copies came from the Riptide shop or trade-ups; Souvenirs came from Dust II packages or the Cologne 2026 Souvenir-O-Matic. There is no StatTrak version, so anything sold as one is not a real item.
• Read the stickers. On a Souvenir, the sticker names include the event, which dates it. A gold player autograph points to a Cologne 2026 conversion; Valve's Stockholm-era Souvenirs carried team and map stickers instead.
• Check for a highlight charm. Austin and Budapest playoff copies came with one, and the charm's description names the match.
• Check the float. Anything from 0.00 to 0.70 is possible, and the exterior name alone doesn't tell you where in that band a copy sits.
• Filter the search. Buy on CS2Sell can filter by collection, Souvenir and float range.

Sources

• Operation Riptide — counter-strike.net
• Introducing Operation Riptide — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
• The Major is Back — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
• IEM Cologne 2026 — Counter-Strike 2 news (Valve)
• Counter-Strike 2 Update, May 21, 2026 — Counter-Strike 2 news (Valve)
• Season 5, Armory, and More — Counter-Strike 2 news (Valve)
• items_game.txt, Valve's item definitions — GameTracking-CS2 (GitHub)
• csgo_english.txt, Valve's English game text — GameTracking-CS2 (GitHub)