SkinBaron is a marketplace for Steam items, particularly for CS:GO skins and items. The platform was founded about 6 years ago, on May 6th, 2016. SkinBaron is currently operated by Hannes Scholz, with headquarters in Hof, Germany. The SkinBaron marketplace and company have been vetted by CSGOSKINS.GG and deemed trustworthy by all our standards.
SkinBaron is rated 4.7 out of 5 with over 1K reviews on Trustpilot. The SkinBaron platform received approximately 617.6K visits during the last month. There are currently 14.9K different items available on the marketplace, with a total of 1.3M listed offers. Additionally, the combined value of all CS:GO skins that are currently available on the SkinBaron market amounts to $3M.
SkinBaron is a traditional bot-based marketplace. That means a seller must first deposit an item before it can be listed on the market. The deposit is done by sending the item to one of SkinBaron’s Steam bot accounts. Compared to P2P markets where the item can be listed on the marketplace while still being in the seller’s inventory, this is not such a smooth experience for the seller. But it provides a better buyer experience because upon purchase, the buyer can immediately receive the item without needing to wait for the seller to accept the trade.
Originally founded in May 2016, SkinBaron is one of the older third-party CS:GO skin markets out there that boasts roughly over a million users per month. Alongside CS:GO skins, SkinBaron also supports skins from a variety of other popular games including DOTA 2, Team Fortress 2, and Rust.
The primary reasons behind the rapid growth in popularity of SkinBaron over the past few years are the successful marketing and advertisement campaigns that the website has run by partnering with renowned CS:GO YouTubers and streamers. To this day, SkinBaron is one of the most-popular third-party skin markets on the internet due to its convenient transactions, swift cashouts, and the vast number of skins available on its market at any point in time.
Another reason behind the growth of SkinBaron is the fact that it is one of the few online third-party skin marketplaces that are fully compliant with all local laws and European legislation, which we’ll get to later.
SkinBaron charges its users a transaction fee of 15% per item sale, which is the same as that of Steam Community Market. However, skins on SkinBaron are generally priced much cheaper than on the Steam Market, which makes up for the high selling fees on the website.
This transaction fee can be reduced to a minimum of only 2% of the sales price based on whether you’re selling high-value items (priced at over 1300€). Sellers making private sales to other buyers will only have to pay a 7.5% of the sales price as the selling fee, which can again be reduced to 1% of the sales price if they’re selling high-value items (>1300€).
Unless you’re conducting private sales to dedicated buyers, the transaction fees on SkinBaron can be quite high when compared to most other third-party CS:GO skin marketplaces including its prominent competitor Skinport (12% sale fee), or BUFF163 (2.5% sale fee).
Since the SkinBaron market is based in Germany, the website sees a good number of visitors from the Western European country. Taking a look at the statistics reveals that roughly a whopping 30% of SkinBaron users are from Germany.
It’s important to note here that SkinBaron’s primary competitor, Skinport, is also a Germany-based market. About 20% of Skinport’s visitors are from Germany.
Despite SkinBaron’s high popularity and millions of monthly visitors, the website has been falling off in popularity over the past few months due to the rise of better alternatives. As mentioned earlier, most other third-party marketplaces that deal with CS:GO skins provide more competitive transaction rates than SkinBaron alongside a better user experience, which might be one of the reasons behind the declining popularity of SkinBaron.
SkinBaron is one of the few popular skin-trading marketplaces that are fully compliant with the PSD2 directive in the EU. This makes purchasing skins from the website safe and reliable as customers won’t be facing any possibility of losing their money while buying or selling skins on SkinBaron.
The PSD2 compliance of SkinBaron is a result of the fact that the website uses the payment processor "Adyen". Since the release of the PSD2 regulation, marketplaces across Europe are no longer allowed to hold customer funds without a banking license. Sales, deposits, payouts, and all transactions on the SkinBaron marketplace are stored and processed by Adyen, which has a banking license and is therefore legally allowed and qualified to keep customer funds safe.
SkinBaron provides users with a hassle-free experience while purchasing or selling skins on the website. Whether you’re a new user or have been buying and selling skins for years, you’ll have no difficulties operating the website due to its intuitive UI and the clear instructions presented to users when they log into the website.
To get started with buying or selling skins on SkinBaron, users have to log in with their Steam account. This can be done by clicking on the "Sign In" button located towards the top-right of the website. Once logged in, users will have to accept a series of terms and conditions before they can access the website.
Buyers have the freedom to select the specific skins that they want to purchase with real money across the thousands of available items on the SkinBaron marketplace. Once you find the items that you’re looking for, simply hit "Add to Cart" to add the item to your cart. You can then click on the "Cart" icon in the top-right anytime you want to complete the transaction.
You’ll have to complete a KYC process before you can add funds to your wallet and complete your purchase.
After successfully completing the purchase, the skins will be automatically added to your inventory.
Similar to purchasing skins, users will need to complete the KYC process first before attempting to sell skins on SkinBaron.
Users can click on the "Sell" icon located towards the top-right beside the "Cart" to initiate the KYC process. Once the KYC procedure has been completed, users are able to list the skins they want to sell on the market.
Once the item has been successfully sold, users will be able to withdraw their funds directly to their bank account.
There are certain advantages to using the SkinBaron marketplace compared to other websites:
We’ve compiled a list of questions that are frequently asked about SkinBaron.
Yes, SkinBaron is legit! There are several factors which let us confidently say that SkinBaron is a trustworthy platform:
SkinBaron has its headquarters in Hof, Germany.
SkinBaron is owned by the company SkinBaron GmbH, which is operated by Hannes Scholz.
The fee for selling items on SkinBaron is 15.00%.
There are several CS:GO marketplaces which are a viable alternative to SkinBaron, including:
SkinBaron was founded 6 years ago, on May 6th, 2016.
When buying items on SkinBaron, you can use any of the following payment methods:
When cashing out balance from SkinBaron, the following payout options are available: