Dreams & Nightmares Case is a CS2 case with 17 items plus 50 gold entries. It costs $0.89; opening it with the key comes to $3.53. The expected value of the contents is $1.65 — a 46.8% unboxing ROI, or 54.5% when trade-up contracts are factored in.
Takeaway: an opening costs $3.53 and returns $1.65 on average — a 53.2% long-run loss. The median opening returns $0.05: half of all tries return that much or less. The key eats 75% of your spend. A full breakdown of every case is in the article Best CS2 cases in August 2026.
Where Dreams & Nightmares Case came from
The skins in this case were painted not by Valve but by entrants of the "Dreams & Nightmares" Steam Workshop contest. Submissions ran from July 22, 2021 to October 21, 2021. Over 15,000 works were submitted, 17 selected, by 24 artists. For 14 authors it was their first accepted work. The case itself was released January 20, 2022.
Buying the contents outright is cheaper than unboxing: all 17 regular skins cost $139 — the price of 39.4 openings at $3.53 each. The priciest is MP9 | Starlight Protector at $59.96, the cheapest is MAC-10 | Ensnared at $0.04.
The case is in the weekly drop pool, so supply is replenished every week — too early to bet on price growth.
No. An opening costs $3.53 ($0.89 for the case plus $2.64 for the key) while the contents average $1.65 — a 46.8% ROI. The chance a single opening returns more than you spent is 4.1%.
How much does it cost to open Dreams & Nightmares Case?
$3.53: the case itself is $0.89 (cheapest on Skinport) plus the $2.64 key. Keys are sold only by Valve at a fixed price.
What do you usually get from Dreams & Nightmares Case?
The median single opening returns $0.05 — half of all openings return that much or less against a $3.53 cost. The best 10% of openings drop an item worth more than $0.61.
What does the "with contracts" column mean?
Some drops are worth more as trade-up contract inputs than sold outright. Counting the better of "sell" vs "feed into a contract", the Dreams & Nightmares Case ROI rises from 46.8% to 54.5%.
What are the knife odds in Dreams & Nightmares Case?
0.26% — roughly one opening in 391. The gold pool has 50 entries picked with equal probability; the wear rolls separately. That many openings cost about $1,382.
Who painted the Dreams & Nightmares Case skins?
The skins came from the "Dreams & Nightmares" Steam Workshop contest — 24 artists, 17 works selected, with a $1 700 000 prize pool. Each skin's author is listed in the contents table above.
Where is Dreams & Nightmares Case cheapest?
Right now the low is $0.89 on Skinport; the highest we track is $1.84 — a 107% spread between markets.
Prices are aggregated from 11 marketplaces into our own database and refresh automatically; USD values are converted from RUB at the current central-bank rate. CS2Price does not sell items — we compare prices and compute profitable trade-up contracts. Not affiliated with Valve.
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