Every skin in Counter-Strike 2 has a rarity grade, shown by the colour of its name and the border around its icon. The grade decides how often it comes out of a case or collection and what a trade-up contract can turn it into. It does not decide the price by itself, which is easy to forget when you are new to trading.
The weapon skin grades
The game's item definitions name seven grades for weapon skins, plus the gold tier used for knives and gloves. The colours below are the hex values the game uses.
| Grade | Colour | Hex | Where it usually sits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer Grade | White-grey | #b0c3d9 | Lowest; map collections and souvenir packages, not keyed cases |
| Industrial Grade | Light blue | #5e98d9 | Low; mostly map collections |
| Mil-Spec Grade | Blue | #4b69ff | The most common case result |
| Restricted | Purple | #8847ff | Uncommon |
| Classified | Pink | #d32ce6 | Rare |
| Covert | Red | #eb4b4b | Very rare; usually the top gun skins |
| Contraband | Orange | #e4ae39 | Discontinued items only |
| Rare Special Item (★) | Gold | — | Knives and gloves |
Contraband is a special case. In the current game files it is assigned to just two items, the M4A4 | Howl and the Howling Dawn sticker. The story behind it is covered in our Howl article.
Other item types reuse the same colours with different names. Stickers, charms and patches mostly come in High Grade, Remarkable, Exotic and Extraordinary (blue, purple, pink and red), while agents use Distinguished, Exceptional, Superior and Master.
What the grades mean for case odds
The official odds come from Perfect World, Valve's partner in China, which publishes them on the Chinese Counter-Strike site because Chinese rules require games with loot boxes to disclose drop rates. The rule is simple. For items at Covert and below, each grade is five times rarer than the one beneath it. A rare special item is 2:5 as likely as a Covert. For items that can roll as StatTrak, the page gives the StatTrak chance as 1:10, roughly one in ten.
For a weapon case opened with a key, that works out to:
| Result | Chance |
|---|---|
| Mil-Spec | 79.923% |
| Restricted | 15.985% |
| Classified | 3.197% |
| Covert | 0.639% |
| Knife or gloves | 0.256% |
PCGamesN reported the same ratios in rounded form when they were first published in September 2017. In other words, about one case in 390 contains a knife or gloves, and about one in 156 contains a Covert gun skin.
The same page lists odds for newer containers. The Dead Hand Terminal is grouped with keyed cases. The Genesis Terminal and the Armory's weapon collections use the same five-to-one steps but have no gold tier. Souvenir packages and map collection packages that run from Consumer Grade to Covert give the top grade only 0.027%. How cases and collections differ is the subject of our collections guide.
What the grades mean for trade-ups
Trade-up contracts climb the same ladder. Ten skins of one grade become one skin of the next grade from the input collections, so Mil-Spec goes to Restricted, Restricted to Classified, and so on. Since October 2025, five Covert skins can be traded for a knife or gloves. Contraband skins can't be used, and Consumer Grade is never a result. A skin that is already the highest grade in its own collection also can't go in. The trade-up guide has the full rules.
Why rarity is not price
A higher grade means fewer copies are created, but the market prices the individual item. A few examples of why the colour can mislead:
- Demand doesn't follow the grade. The Counter-Strike Wiki notes that Valve originally placed the designs it expected to be most popular in the lower grades, and that this proved wrong once players showed they preferred bright, distinctive skins. Grade tracks how often an item drops, not how much people want it.
- Supply over time. Cases that no longer drop, or collections tied to past events, stop adding new copies, which can lift every grade inside them.
- Item details. Float, pattern, StatTrak, Souvenir status and applied stickers can each matter more than the grade. The AK-47 | Case Hardened is a Classified skin, yet rare patterns of it are among the most valuable guns in the game, as our blue gem guide explains.
The broader forces are covered in how CS2 skin prices work.
Using rarity when you browse
Rarity is still a useful filter. If you are building a loadout on a budget, sorting by grade within a collection shows you which skins are meant to be the common pieces and which are the chase items. When you are about to run a trade-up, it tells you which skins can go into the same contract.
On CS2Sell, the rarity and collection filters on Buy let you list every skin of one grade from a single collection, which is a quick way to price the inputs and possible results of a contract. Before you act on it, check prices for the exact wear and quality you need, since those vary more than the grade does.