Sweeps

A sweep is one batch purchase on the Steam Market, numbered and logged.

When a sweep runs

Fees collect in the war chest until the balance reaches the sweep threshold, currently $500. Then the whole balance is spent at once. Buying in batches keeps the ledger short enough to read and avoids dribbling money into the order book all day.

The war chest holds $481.82 right now, which is about 373 cases at the current price. The next one will be sweep #0042.

How the buying works

Because the case is a commodity, the reserve places buy orders on the order book rather than clicking the cheapest listing repeatedly. A large order fills against many sellers over minutes or hours, so the average price of a sweep is usually a little different from the lowest listing at the moment it started.

That average is what appears in the ledger. Sweep #0041 filled 512 cases at an average of $0.89, for $455.68.

Valve's limits

Steam caps how much a wallet can hold and spend in a rolling 24 hour period, currently described as $2,000 in total. A sweep larger than that has to run across more than one day. The reserve stays inside the limit rather than routing around it, which is also rule 02.

What a sweep leaves behind

Each sweep produces one row in the ledger with the same fields every time.