Understanding why a skin like the Crimson Web is so much more expensive in Factory New compared to Minimal Wear comes down to the narrow float window. I am looking at a M9 Bayonet Crimson Web, and the price jumps from a few hundred dollars to several thousand just for that FN tag. It seems like the game restricts certain finishes from having low float values, making them nearly impossible to unbox in a perfect state. Does this float cap apply to all older skins, or is it specific to certain types of paint finishes like "Anodized Multicolored" versus "Custom Paint Job"? I want to know if hunting for a 0.06 float is actually worth the effort or if the visual difference is negligible for the average player.
The 0.06 cap is a legacy mechanic that makes certain skins the ultimate status symbols because the "Factory New" version is mathematically rare. For Crimson Web, the float range is 0.06 to 0.80, meaning only a tiny fraction of a percent of all drops will ever land in that FN zone. Visually, a 0.07 Minimal Wear often looks identical to a 0.06 Factory New, but the price reflects the difficulty of the "pull" rather than the actual aesthetic quality. If you are a collector, you want the FN for the ranking, but if you just want the look, you should always go for a low-float Minimal Wear. You can save 80% of your budget and get a skin that looks 99% as good.
Specific finish styles like "Patina" or "Gunsmith" handle wear by darkening the skin rather than adding scratches, which changes how you should evaluate the float. I spent a long time trying to figure out why my "Battle-Scarred" Medusa looked so much cleaner than my "Field-Tested" Safari Mesh. I found https://dmarket.com/cs2-wiki/ (https://dmarket.com/cs2-wiki/) cs skins wiki while searching for a list of float caps for various weapon collections. The information on that site explained the difference between the various finish categories and how the game calculates wear for each one. Because of that, I stopped overpaying for FN on skins where the wear was barely visible anyway. It really changed how I spend my money on my loadout because I can now identify which skins actually benefit from a lower float.