Paris 2023 capsules are currently going for around $0.07–$0.18 on the Steam Market. That’s less than what Valve sold them for during the official Major sale at $0.25 a pop. Three years later, you can grab them cheaper than during the sale. That’s not normal for Major capsules, and there’s a pretty specific chain of events that led here.
The Biggest Major Sale in CS History
Paris was not a flop in terms of raw revenue. It was actually the opposite. According to HLTV’s reporting, sticker earnings from the Paris Major exceeded $110 million for teams alone, with Contenders players pocketing around $4.5 million per team and $250k per player. Stockholm and Antwerp combined for roughly $70 million total. Paris alone nearly doubled that, in one event.
The reason Paris did those numbers comes down to timing. The stickers were on sale for almost five months (May to September 2023), it was the last CS:GO Major before the CS2 transition, and CS2’s release sent the player count through the roof, with average concurrent players exceeding 1 million for the first time ever. There were more eyeballs on the game than there had ever been, and they all had the option to buy capsules.
Community data suggests over 1 billion capsules were purchased in total, with roughly 430 million opened in the weeks right after the sale closed. Those numbers are staggering.
So Why Are They Worthless Now?
Simple answer: everyone bought them thinking they’d go up, and almost nobody actually uses them relative to how many are out there.
Sticker prices go up over time when supply shrinks, which happens when people apply stickers to their guns and remove them from the market forever. Stockholm capsules pumped hard because people were genuinely crafting with them. The design was clean, unique, and players wanted them on their rifles.
Paris stickers? Barely anyone touches them. With hundreds of millions of capsules sitting in inventories and on the market, the supply is massive and there’s no meaningful consumption pulling it down. The market is flooded and nothing is draining it.
Everyone Expected Stockholm 2.0
Stockholm and Antwerp stickers were borderless, meaning they sit directly on the skin without any form of border around them (Just the tournament logo, like in Kato 14’s). The community loved this. Those capsules appreciated nicely over time, and a lot of people made money holding them.
Then Paris dropped, also borderless, and investors piled in expecting the same trajectory. The problem is that the thesis only works if scarcity follows. It never did.
Here’s how the Major sticker formats have played out:
| Major | Format |
|---|---|
| Stockholm 2021 | Borderless |
| Antwerp 2022 | Borderless |
| Rio 2022 | Bordered (community disliked this) |
| Paris 2023 | Borderless |
| Copenhagen 2024 | Borderless |
| Shanghai 2024 | Borderless |
| Austin 2025 | Bordered |
| Budapest 2025 | Bordered |
Paris buyers were banking on borderless being a differentiator. Then Copenhagen came out borderless. Then Shanghai. Three consecutive borderless Majors in a row with massive supply. Whatever premium the format was supposed to carry got diluted completely.
On top of that, the Paris sticker designs are essentially identical to Stockholm and Antwerp visually. When Paris stickers launched, Stockholm and Antwerp sticker prices actually dropped because people suddenly had access to near-identical looks for pennies.
Paris Burning Investors Accidentally Made Copenhagen And Shanghai Work
Here’s the genuinely interesting part of this story. Because Paris wiped out so many people who bought in expecting big returns, participation in the Copenhagen and Shanghai sales was noticeably lower. Fewer capsules sold, less supply in circulation, and both ended up being profitable for the people who actually got in. Copenhagen was a solid return. Shanghai was too.
The investors who got stung by Paris sat out the next two Majors entirely. Ironically, that’s exactly why both of them performed better.
It’s a classic market overcorrection. Paris had too many buyers chasing a thesis that didn’t hold. Copenhagen and Shanghai had too few, which made the economics work. If you missed both because you were still salty about Paris, that probably stings a bit.
Cheaper Than the Valve Sale Price
The thing that really puts it in perspective is that these capsules are now trading below what Valve charged during the official sale. During every Major, Valve discounts capsules to $0.25 near the end of the event. Paris capsules hit $0.07–$0.09 on third-party markets right now. You’re buying them at a 60%+ discount compared to the sale price. That’s not recovery territory, that’s the floor still looking for somewhere to go.
For context, Antwerp capsules bottomed out around $0.20 after their sale before eventually recovering and climbing. Paris hasn’t found that floor yet, and with this much supply and so little consumption, it’s hard to see what changes that equation in the near term.
Are They Worth Buying at This Price?
None of this is investment advice – just market observations from someone who spends too much time watching sticker prices. Take it with a grain of salt.
This is genuinely a hard call and the community is split on it. At under $0.10 on third-party markets, the downside is pretty limited. You’re spending less than a coffee. If you just want a specific player auto for a craft and don’t care about the investment angle, this is actually a great time to buy the individual stickers directly rather than gambling on capsule rolls.
As an investment? The supply problem doesn’t go away just because the price is low. You’d need a significant portion of those hundreds of millions of capsules to get consumed before prices move meaningfully upward, and right now there’s no reason to expect that to happen any time soon. Some people are holding long-term on the logic that eventually Paris stickers will carry nostalgia value for the CS2 era. Maybe. But that’s a multi-year play with no guaranteed outcome.
There’s also a theory floating around that Valve will eventually stop releasing borderless stickers, which would make Paris retroactively more desirable. Possible, but borderless designs have been printing Valve serious money across multiple Majors now, so banking on that change feels like a stretch.
If you want to pick a few up as cheap mementos from one of the most financially wild Majors in CS history, or to craft a skin for cheap, go for it. Just don’t expect them to make you rich.
