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Back in 2012, Valve added the "Something Special for Someone Special" to Team Fortress 2. It was a $100 cosmetic item which allowed the owner to "propose" to another player. If the proposal was accepted, a notification would be publically broadcast to anyone currently playing Team Fortress 2.

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Naturally, people immediately started taking advantage. After all, $100 to get a message out to 50,000 players seemed like a great deal.

"Will Smith has accepted that his mom got scared"

At the time it seemed like a new ring was bought every 5 minutes. But years later, I'm left with a single question.

How many of these rings people buy?

Theoretically, it should be possible to see how many players have rings in their inventory, since items are publically searchable.

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    It still occasionally happens. A few TF2 personalities have done streams and fundraisers where at the end they gift the ring to a significant other, another TF2 player, and so on. It's more of a novelty rather than something serious (which let's be honest, pretty much sums up most Mann Co. Items :)
    – Robotnik ♦
    May 1, 2017 at 3:34
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    @Robotnik it's cool to hear it still happens. I have fond memories of when the item first came out, when the ring spam seemed to be never ending.
    – Stevoisiak
    May 1, 2017 at 4:14

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According to backpack.tf (links will be provided) there are 6,446 actual rings in people's inventories, and another 225 of the tools that have not been sent to anyone but can still be sent. So at the time of this post, there have been (6446 / 2 ) + 225 = 3448 Something Special For Someone Special's purchased. Of course, this is only from public backpacks, as there could be more hidden in private accounts, so this number is only a rough estimate.

Backpack.tf: Something Special For Someone Special

Backpack.tf: Something Special For Someone Special (the ring itself)

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  • Wouldn't you need to cut that number in half, since every purchase means who players get e ring after a proposal?
    – Stevoisiak
    May 1, 2017 at 17:12
  • Yes!! Thank you for pointing that out! You should divide the 6446 by two though, not the final answer, as the other 225 haven't been sent yet. So my answer should really be 3448 purchased.
    – WaveX
    May 1, 2017 at 17:20
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    That number also doesn't count any deleted users (or deleted rings) as well as private accounts (as you mentioned). But as Valve is notorious for not releasing sales numbers this is probably the closest we can get :)
    – Robotnik ♦
    May 2, 2017 at 2:51

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