Trading Games

A CSGO key is a "Chroma cases key things", as they are very stable in price, many tend to trade with them as a currency.

A CS:GO key is used in counter strike to open cases, they should be stable but people can make up whatever value they want as long as someone doesnt know better

The value of a CSGO key is stable. But the value of games is not.

Sometimes games get bundled or go on sale. some traders will lower their asking price accordingly, other traders do not. Some traders are happy to make a small profit and want to do so quickly, others want a big score and don't mind waiting for it.

Plus there's a lot of fluctuation. For example, a few years ago there was a price glitch where Tropico 4 was available for $0.39. Some traders were happy to sell it for 1/2 a key (which is more than double what they paid for it). Other traders were asking for a key. Right now, the game is available for free, so I'd expect most traders are willing to take just about any offer for it. The game is only available for free for 2 days, and the keys expire in a week. So a month from now, traders will once again be asking 1/2 a key, or possibly a whole key for it.

On top of that, trading is an opaque market, there's no clear price available. I've had one trader ask 5 keys for a game that I got off another trader for 1 key.

It's much less stressful to not bother with trading on Steam. You're more or less paying the exact same price, now that they stopped cross-region trading. Before when you could trade with someone from Russia (where game prices are much lower), you could save a lot of money. But they stopped that and now it's basically not worth trading at all. I'm surprised people still do it.

Trading is mainly judging the price, for example someone trash can be others treasure.
But the main thing is the price would be according to yourself. If you think it's worth it, you'll trade but if it's too low, you can decline the trade.
Well... Csgo key is an stable item to trade so most people would prefer it compared to cards.

You're seeing the trade "stores"--people, often with large lists of available games, who want currency in exchange (in the form of CsGo or TF2 keys). My understanding is that people like this make their money on transaction volume, and usually don't give you a very good deal, though they may beat the current store price by a few bucks.

If you want to do better you need to do business with other sorts of traders willing to swap games for games. You can look for people who's "w:" in their thread title lists something besides keys and cash, or set up your own thread and make deals with the people who post in it. Also, there's Barter.vg, where there's a system in place to partially automate trade matchmaking.This sort of thing is hit or miss. Sometimes people are quite unreasonable, or just don't want what you're offering. (That's a big advantage of a fungible currency...) But on things like bundle games of roughly comparable value you can often do well.

(If you're interested, I once opened a thread on how traders assess the value of bundle games.)