Some TF2 questions

1. No, they wouldn't get premium.
2. Yes you do. And you may only trade when you're premium.
3. No. As I said, you can't trade with non-premium (and no-one will trade a key for any stuff a non-premiumer would have). And just gifting items to accounts won't make them Premium. You can close this thread now.

You have to purchase something ON the alt account. And since you need to add a minimum of $5 to your steam wallet at a time, most people just buy 2 keys to make the alt account premium

This and this could help you

Also, be aware that if they crack the code and figure out that you have alt accounts, you'll more than likely lose everything.

It's funny how people are always trying to find ways to exploit the system.

Also, you are kind of late to the party, ain't you?

1. If you want premium on multiple accounts, try out the cheapest weapon, and then buy it. You get extra discount that way
2. Unique is the only kind that drops right now ( if I'm correct ) but you can get hats ( way more valuable ) when you get premium.
3. You can't trade keys to free accounts to make them premium, you also need to be premium to trade ( if you are a free player you can receive, but not give ) I hope this will help

You have to use Steam Wallet to buy from Mann Co which means $5 minimum per account, you only have to make one purchase from the store to get premium though.

So you can either buy the cheapest item, save the rest of the Steam Wallet for a sale and buy a game to trade. Issue with that is you can't trade whatever you bought from the Steam Store for 30 days. I'm not sure if this goes from your first store purchase or if it'd start from your Mann Co purchase, but either way it's something to watch out for.

If you wanted to quickly cash out using the Mann Co store, you could buy 2 keys for $5, they're only worth $1.25 each on trade sites so you'd lose 50% of your investment off the bat. You could also try backpack expander (2 keys, 2 ref-3 key value) or paints which would offer less % loss, but would be a bit harder to sell.

The best thing to do is wait for some type of TF2 event or Steam sale. During the Summer Sale they had lots of discounted paints and you were able to buy a paint for .62 which typically sold for 2 ref (.90-$1). Lots of people did this so their price has dropped from 2 ref, but as long as you get at least 1.25 ref/paint, you'd be breaking even with your investment.

1 Buy cheap weapon > spend rest on game(s) > send game(s) to self at purchase > redeem on main account
Note that you can only become premium by making a purchase on that specific account in the ingame store which requires an investment of at least 5 bucks per account for the wallet minimum.

2 as far as I'm aware p2p (premium) and f2p (non-premium) get the same drops, though I have seen different circumstances. Nonetheless, you can't trade the items till you get premium anywho. (items become tradable when you switch over, unless they're achievement-gotten)

3 I kind of answered that at 1

But if you're new to TF2 I don't see the merit in starting a bunch of accounts till you get an idea of what's up.
I was trading using 1 account for a while till I started adding accounts (for storage, originally). I'm up to 20 accounts now, don't intend to get more. Started idling, which gives some nice trading materials :)

Thanks everyone for help!