A: The Sunbeams Patriot Peak was my dream unusual—my big trading goal—for a long time. The problem for me wasn't that I didn't have enough keys; I had way more than enough. No, the problem was that, for some strange reason, the Sunbeams Patriot Peak is really, REALLY hard to track down. Almost every owner is either entirely inactive or unwilling to part with it. I spent 6 months of actively trying to buy the hat for way more than what it was suggested to be worth, and I didn't have a single shred of a lead. I even got backpack.tf premium to find each of the owners and give them an offer, and only three owners ever accepted my friend request—all declined to sell. I even put out a bounty, saying that I'd pay 20 pure keys to anyone that could get me in touch with an owner of a Sunbeams Patriot Peak. No dice.

While trading, I came to possess a Sunbeams Killer Exclusive. It was a nice hat, but I wasn't attached to it. I had this idea: most people think this Killer Exclusive would be a straight upgrade from their Patriot Peak. What if I just sent out trade offers with a 1:1? Couldn't hurt to try.

Many trade offers later, I got declined on every one of them. I was losing hope and was quite frankly very frustrated at my poor luck in acquiring one, when I received a friend request from a name I recognized as an owner of one of the Sunbeams Patriot Peaks. I accepted, and Sola (the owner) told me that they declined the trade accidentally, and actually meant to accept it. My heart skipped a beat and I reread the message through an giddy smile. Sure enough, a few moments later I received a trade from Sola and promptly accepted it, exclaiming aloud in glorious exaltation. It was mine! Finally, at long last, after so many months of trying to find one, it was finally mine!

A bucket of white paint was promptly applied to my new prized possession, and at last I equipped the cosmetics that I had already gotten ready for each class months prior in order to match the hat. After much frustration, effort, and dreaming, my journey had finally come to a satisfying and stylish end.

...So why did I buy two more?

Well, I still had the alert notification on backpack.tf to tell me if a Sunbeams Patriot Peak was listed on the classifieds. I had forgotten about it, but one day I got a notification and clicked on it to see that there was a Sunbeams Patriot Peak being sold by a Scrapyard bot for a stupidly low price. I had a bunch of pure keys at the time, so before the listing was even 12 hours old, I purchased my second Sunbeams Patriot Peak in pure keys for a killer deal.

Nice. Now I've got two. Cool, cool... cool.

The third?

Same thing, really. I got another notification that one was on the market recently as of writing this, and so I was like, "heh, you know what would be funny?" and then I bought it as well with pure keys. A trio of my favorite hat and effect in the game, and I am quite pleased with my purchases! Now one of my favorite things to do is to go onto trade servers and ask people what color paint they think looks better, switching between black and white and team spirit to make them think I'm wasting expensive paint buckets for a joke, because who would own three Sunbeams Patriot Peaks?