Read purchases and sales
Follow recorded acquisitions, delivery and sales without confusing a price difference with net profit.
Open Purchases or Sales in the intended workspace. Contract records shows acquisitions and sold inventory attributed to contracts. Marketplace history is a separate record source; an empty contract list does not mean there is no marketplace history.
Your role controls which records and linked accounts or contracts you can open. An unavailable linked record does not remove the financial evidence you are already allowed to read.
Inspect a purchase
- Open Purchases and choose a purchase status to narrow the result.
- Select a row to inspect its recorded price, account, delivery state and review messages. Use Open full purchase when you need a separate detail page.
- Compare the recorded purchase price with the committed ceiling. The Ceiling difference is their difference; it is not evidence of a separate fee payment.
- Check the recorded lifecycle times. A purchased item can still be awaiting delivery or in escrow. An expected escrow end is not confirmation that delivery completed.
- Follow the buying contract, account or received inventory evidence when available. Check asset identifiers when tracing an item through transfers.
The inventory-cost summary covers all recorded contract inventory. Changing the purchase-status filter does not change that summary's scope.
If a purchase is flagged for review, read the specific reason and its recorded time before drawing a conclusion. A loading error, missing delivery evidence and a confirmed failed purchase are different states.
Inspect a sale
- Open Sales and select the item you want to inspect.
- Compare Recorded item cost, Recorded sale price and Recorded spread.
- Check Proceeds evidence. Gross proceeds, net proceeds and sale fees can be unavailable separately even when a recorded sale price exists.
- Follow the recorded purchase and buying contract when your role permits it. Keep the inventory and asset identifiers with any support request.
Recorded spread is sale price minus recorded item cost. It is not a claim of net profit because the record does not establish the fee basis. Do not replace unavailable fees or proceeds with zero.
Some older sales have no recorded sale time. The list identifies a Legacy update time when it uses the record's update time instead; that is not a newly established sale time.
Follow the evidence
The same item name can describe many assets. Use the purchase, inventory, listing and asset identifiers shown in the detail to distinguish them. An image or matching item name alone does not establish a purchase-to-sale match.
On a purchase, Asset history follows recorded asset identifiers through the listing, purchase trade and sale trade stages. Keep the source reference for the stage you are checking:
| Stage | Source reference |
|---|---|
| Listing | Listing ID |
| Purchase trade | Completed Steam trade ID |
| Sale trade | Sale settlement ID |
A completed Steam trade ID is not a Steam offer ID. Use the genuine offer link from Trade offers when you need to inspect an offer; do not construct one from an asset-history reference.
When following a permitted account, contract or full-record link from an inspector, browser Back returns to the prior purchase or sale selection and list position. Check the workspace and status filter again if you arrive through a fresh bookmark.
If a linked account, contract or purchase is unavailable, keep the displayed identity and read the explanation. Your access may differ between record types, or the linked record may no longer be available. Do not infer a missing purchase cost or a different owner from a failed lookup.
When a read fails
Purchases and Sales retry temporary read failures automatically. Previously loaded records may remain visible; read the freshness message before treating them as current. Sign-in, permission and missing-record errors are not temporary connection failures: follow the displayed access or lookup explanation. An unavailable or pending read is different from a successful empty result and does not confirm that a purchase or sale failed.
These pages inspect recorded evidence. They do not place orders, confirm current execution readiness or prove that funds have reached an external account.
For the Steam asset exchange, use trade offers. For the intended item and committed contract price, use current targets. Neither replaces the recorded purchase, sale or fee evidence described here.