CS2 Charms Explained

What are charms in CS2?

Charms are small decorative items that hang from your weapon. Valve added them with The Armory update on 2 October 2024, calling them "dynamic items you can apply to your favorite weapons". They are tradable items with their own market prices, like stickers.

The rules from that release:

• One charm per weapon. A weapon can have one charm attached at a time.
• You choose where it hangs. You drag and drop the charm to place it precisely on the weapon.
• It comes off again. A Charm Detachment removes it, and the charm returns to your inventory to be reused.

That last point is the big difference from stickers. An applied sticker can never go back to your inventory, as our sticker value guide explains. A charm is a separate item you can move from gun to gun.

How do you get charms in CS2?

There are four ways, and they cost very different amounts.

1. The Armory. You earn Armory Credits with an active Armory Pass and spend them on items, including charm collections. You do not choose the exact charm. Our Armory Pass guide covers the credit costs and whether the pass pays.
2. Buy from other players. Every regular charm trades on the Steam Market and on cash marketplaces. This is the only way to pick the exact charm you want.
3. Major souvenirs. Valve introduced Souvenir Charms at the BLAST.tv Austin Major in July 2025: each Playoff Stage Souvenir comes with a Souvenir Charm holding a highlight from the match. For the Cologne 2026 Major, Highlight Souvenir Charms were sold directly in the Major Shop.
4. Sticker Slabs. Added on 12 November 2025, a Sticker Slab is "a charm that seals any sticker and can be attached to weapons". Crack it open and the sticker returns to your inventory.

There are four regular charm collections in the ByMykel item dataset: Missing Link (17 charms) and Small Arms (16), which arrived with the Armory, plus Missing Link Community (23) and Dr. Boom (22), which Valve added on 1 October 2025. That makes 78 regular charms.

How do you attach and remove a charm?

To attach a charm (Valve's notes describe it as drag and drop):

1. Open your inventory and select the charm.
2. Choose the weapon you want to put it on.
3. Drag the charm to the spot you want on the weapon, then confirm.

If the weapon already has a charm, you need to remove that one first.

To remove a charm:

1. Get a Charm Detachment. Redeeming a charm from the Armory gives you three free ones, and Valve's notes say more are available to buy.
2. Use the Charm Detachment on the weapon.
3. The charm goes back to your inventory, ready to use again.

The game's item text for every charm says the same: it "can be attached to any weapon you own. Each attached charm can be detached by using a Charm Detachment" (ByMykel dataset). Before you commit, you can preview charms on your own items: the same 2024 notes let you preview charms from the Steam Market, the Armory or a friend's inventory page on your weapons.

How much are CS2 charms worth?

Most charms are cheap. Price follows rarity closely.

Source: CSRated price snapshot, 2 October 2026 (lowest cash listing across Skinport, Market.CSGO, Waxpeer, Lis-Skins and White.market). "Typical" is the median. Rarities from the ByMykel dataset.

The most expensive regular charms in our snapshot:

Source: CSRated price snapshot, 2 October 2026. Steam prices are Steam Wallet money.

At the other end, Backsplash and Stitch-Loaded listed at $0.06 each, and 24 of the 78 charms were under $0.20. Buying one of every regular charm at the lowest cash listing would have cost about $440, and the top two make up almost half of that.

The community-made Missing Link Community collection had the highest typical price ($1.25), against $0.41 to $0.49 for the other three.

Which charm collection is worth the most?

The four regular collections differ a lot once you add up every charm in them.

Source: CSRated price snapshot, 2 October 2026 (lowest cash listing); collection membership from the ByMykel dataset.

The two newer collections are worth far more in total, but most of that sits in one or two charms each. In the Dr. Boom collection, Butane Buddy alone is about 62% of the total. If you redeem charms from a collection hoping for value, the typical result is a charm worth well under a dollar.

Rarer charms also have fewer copies for sale. The median High Grade charm had about 1,300 cash listings, the median Extraordinary charm about 300.

Does it matter where you buy a charm?

Yes, more for cheap charms than for expensive ones. For each charm we compared the cheapest and the most expensive of the five cash markets. Typically, the highest was 1.17 times the lowest. The Steam Market was typically 1.48 times the cheapest cash listing.

Worked example. Butane Buddy listed at $122.93 on Lis-Skins, $129.88 on Market.CSGO and $155.79 on the Steam Market. Buying the cheapest cash listing saved about $33 against Steam. On a cheap charm like Backsplash, the gap was $0.06 on White.market against $0.26 on Lis-Skins: four times the price, but only 20 cents.

So for a charm under a dollar, buy wherever is convenient. For an Exotic or Extraordinary charm, compare markets first. Our compare skins tool and each item's price page show the market quotes side by side.

What are Souvenir Charms and Sticker Slabs worth?

Our snapshot priced 926 different Souvenir Charms. They are mostly cheap: the median Austin 2025 highlight listed at $1.37, Budapest 2025 at $0.47 and Cologne 2026 at $0.83.

A few show eye-catching prices, such as $11,390 for two Budapest 2025 highlights. Each of those had a single listing on one market, which is an asking price, not a value. Ignore single-listing prices when you judge what a charm is worth.

We also priced 1,301 Sticker Slabs. Since a slab can be cracked open to get the sticker back, compare its price with the sealed sticker's own price before you buy. Our sticker value guide covers how stickers are priced.

Do charms add value to a skin?

Not in the way stickers can. Because a charm can be detached and reused, it stays its own item with its own price. Treat a skin with a charm as two items: the skin at its market price, and the charm at its market price.

That has two practical effects:

• When buying, do not pay extra for a skin because of the charm on it unless you check the charm's own price.
• When selling, detach a valuable charm and sell it separately if the buyer will not pay for it.

Do charm patterns or templates matter?

Each charm carries a template number, and Valve made it visible in the charm description in the 13 November 2024 update. Some collectors track particular templates the way they track pattern indexes on skins.

Valve has not published which templates are rare or special, and our price data groups all templates of a charm under one name. If a seller asks a premium for a "rare template", ask for the template number and check it against more than one collector list before paying. For how pattern premiums work on skins, see the pattern index guide.

Common charm mistakes

• Trusting a single listing. A charm with one listing on one market can show any price. Check that several markets list it near the same level.
• Paying for the gun's charm twice. A skin listed "with charm" is still two items. Price each one.
• Buying on Steam by default. Steam Market sale money cannot be withdrawn, per the Community Market FAQ, and the Steam price was typically about 1.5 times the cash price in our data, so the same charm usually costs less on a cash market.
• Forgetting the trade lock. A charm redeemed from the Armory cannot be traded or listed for 7 days, so you cannot flip it straight away.
• Expecting Armory redemptions to pay. With a typical High Grade charm worth about $0.10, most redemptions return far less than the credits cost. The Armory Pass guide works through that maths.

Should you buy charms or redeem them from the Armory?

• You want a specific charm: buy it. Armory redemptions give a random charm from the collection.
• You already have an Armory Pass: redeeming charms is fine if you enjoy them, but most regular charms sell for under a dollar.
• You want a valuable charm: buy it on a cash market and compare prices. On the six top charms, the Steam Market cost 27% to 52% more.
• You are checking an inventory: our inventory value tool adds up charms with everything else, and the trade evaluator helps when a charm is part of a trade.

The charm glossary entry has the short definition, and our guide to how CS2 skin prices work explains the wider market.