ItemsOct 27, 20264 min readCS2Sell

M4A1-S Fade in CS2: Sport & Field origin, float, fade % and Souvenirs

The M4A1-S Fade in CS2 is the only Covert of the 2024 Sport & Field Collection. Its 0.00 to 0.08 float, best fade seeds, Souvenir copies and why no StatTrak exists.

The M4A1-S Fade puts Counter-Strike's classic Fade gradient on the silenced rifle, and it is the only Covert skin in the Sport & Field Collection. Valve added it with the Armory on October 2, 2024, so it never existed in CS:GO. This guide covers where it comes from, its rarity and float, how fade percentage works on this gun and which versions exist.

Where the M4A1-S Fade comes from

Valve's release notes for October 2, 2024 introduced the Armory with "3 new weapon collections", among other items. Players activated an Armory Pass, earned credits through XP and redeemed them for items. The Counter-Strike Wiki lists the Sport & Field Collection at 4 credits per redemption, and each redemption gave one of its 16 skins at random. Our Armory article lists the whole collection.

BLAST.tv's breakdown the next day said the collection brought "a new rendition of the classic Fade skin" and named the M4A1-S Fade its standout. No case has ever contained it. Valve's July 8, 2026 notes then said the Sport & Field Collection is "no longer available in the Armory", so the Armory stopped producing new copies.

The Sport & Field Collection's two Classified skins and its Covert

Rarity, float and wear

In the game's item definitions the M4A1-S Fade sits alone in the collection's Covert tier, with a float range of 0.00 to 0.08. That allows only two exteriors:

Exterior	Float range
Factory New	0.00 to 0.07
Minimal Wear	0.07 to 0.08

Seven-eighths of the range is Factory New, and the listings show it: on October 27, 2026 the Steam Community Market had 328 Factory New listings against 16 Minimal Wear. The in-game text is the standard Fade description, a finish "painted by airbrushing transparent paints that fade together over a chrome base coat", but the M4A1-S has its own paint in the files, number 1177, rather than sharing the Glock's.

M4A1-S Fade percentage and the best seeds

Fade percentage isn't a game stat. The open-source fade calculator turns each paint seed into the gradient's rotation and scores the best rotation 100% and the worst 80%; our fade percentage guide explains the method.

The scores are worked out per weapon, so the M4A1-S has its own best seeds. In the calculator's data, seed 374 is the only 100% M4A1-S Fade, followed by seeds 279 and 80, and seed 739 is the worst at 80%. Only 35 of the 1,001 possible seeds reach 99% or higher. On the Karambit and AWP, by contrast, the top seed is 412.

Hotspawn's pattern guide, updated in May 2026, matches that: 374 is the only perfect seed, and it lists 34 more at 99%. It describes the ideal M4A1-S Fade as showing no white at all, with roughly 20% yellow, 60% pink and 20% purple. Further down the scale, white creeps onto the silencer, the purple almost disappears and pink takes over, and Hotspawn notes that most seeds fall between 80% and 89%.

StatTrak and Souvenir versions

There is no StatTrak M4A1-S Fade. The collection came from Armory redemptions rather than a case, and a StatTrak trade-up would need StatTrak Classifieds from Sport & Field, which don't exist. On October 27, 2026 the Steam Community Market listed only four versions: Factory New and Minimal Wear, each in normal and Souvenir quality.

The Souvenirs are recent. With the IEM Cologne 2026 Major, Valve introduced the Souvenir-O-Matic: "Take any weapon of normal or souvenir quality in your inventory and select a completed match and one of the players from that match." The weapon comes back as a Souvenir with gold team, autograph and map stickers, and any stickers it had are removed. So every Souvenir M4A1-S Fade is a converted normal copy, not a package drop. Our StatTrak vs Souvenir guide covers both labels.

Trade-ups in and out

A trade-up contract exchanges ten items of one grade for one item a grade higher, "from a collection of one of the items you provided", in the wording of the official description. Because the Fade is the only Covert in Sport & Field, ten Classified skins from the collection, any mix of Galil AR | Rainbow Spoon and Glock-18 | AXIA, always return an M4A1-S Fade. Since a May 21, 2026 update, Souvenir copies can go into a contract too, losing their Souvenir status.

Going the other way is not possible. A Covert is the top grade of its collection, so it can't enter a ten-item contract, and the Sport & Field Collection has no knife or glove list in the item files for the five-Covert knife trade-up.

Is there an M4A4 Fade?

No. If you searched for an "M4 Fade", the M4A1-S is the only M4 with the finish. The M4A4's closest name is Faded Zebra, which the game describes as "spray-painted in a zebra stripe pattern", a different finish altogether. The calculator's data lists seven guns with a Fade: the AWP, Glock-18, M4A1-S, MAC-10, MP7, R8 Revolver and UMP-45. Our M4A1-S skins guide covers the rifle's other finishes.

On CS2Sell, Buy can filter M4A1-S Fades by fade percentage, float range and Souvenir. Before you pay, check the seed yourself: it is the Pattern Template in the inspect panel.