Rare Special Item is the name CS2 uses for the knife or glove slot in a weapon case. When you open a case, the item list shows the regular skins by rarity, plus one gold entry called a Rare Special Item that stands in for every knife or glove finish that case can produce. Traders call this tier "gold" and call the result "unboxing a knife".
The odds Valve's Chinese publisher Perfect World published in 2017 give the Rare Special Item a 0.256% chance per case, about one in 390 openings, with a 1 in 10 chance that any item comes out StatTrak. The same disclosure says every item of the same grade has an equal chance, so once the gold slot hits, each knife or glove finish in that case's list is as likely as any other. The float and pattern are rolled like on any new item.
What counts as a Rare Special Item?
Knives and gloves. Each case has its own set. In the ByMykel CSGO-API item dataset, 35 of the 42 weapon cases list knives in the gold slot and 7 list gloves: the Glove, Operation Hydra, Clutch, Operation Broken Fang, Snakebite, Recoil and Revolution cases. No case holds both knives and gloves; it is one or the other.
Can you get a Rare Special Item without opening cases?
Yes, in two ways. You can buy one from another player or a marketplace, which is what most owners do. Or, since Valve's update of 22 October 2025, you can put five Covert skins into a trade-up contract: five regular Coverts give one regular knife or one regular pair of gloves from a collection of one of the inputs, and five StatTrak Coverts give one StatTrak knife. You cannot choose the model or finish, so the value of the result can range from cheap to very expensive.
Because a gold can be worth a lot or very little depending on the finish and float, the average value of a Rare Special Item is not the same as the price of the knife you hope for. Case odds calculators use the average across all possible golds, which is the honest number.