Minimal Wear, shortened to MW, is the tier between Factory New and Field-Tested. A skin is Minimal Wear when its float value falls between 0.07 and 0.15. On most finishes the wear shows as faint scratches on edges and raised parts of the weapon, and from a normal in-game view the skin still looks clean.
Minimal Wear is a popular buying tier for that reason. It usually costs a good deal less than Factory New, and the visual gap is small. Many traders describe it as the best value wear for skins you plan to use.
When is Minimal Wear almost as good as Factory New?
A Minimal Wear skin at 0.071 is one tiny step from Factory New, and on many finishes it looks the same. Prices tend to jump at the 0.07 line even though the look barely changes, so a low-float Minimal Wear can be a smart buy. On the other end, a copy at 0.149 sits right at the Field-Tested border and may show noticeably more wear, so check the float rather than trusting the label.
Some finishes have a float cap that starts within or above the Minimal Wear range, and for those skins Minimal Wear may be the best tier that exists. That pushes Minimal Wear copies of those skins to Factory New style prices.
How does Minimal Wear affect trade-ups?
Input floats decide the output float. If you want a Minimal Wear output, the average of your normalized input floats, mapped onto the output's float range, needs to land between 0.07 and 0.15. Minimal Wear inputs are often the cheapest way to hit a Minimal Wear or Factory New output, since Factory New inputs cost more and the extra float headroom is sometimes wasted. A float cap calculator shows exactly where a set of inputs will land.