According to bp.tf...
Refined metal is priced at $0.24-0.25.
Keys are priced at $7.33-7.44.
That makes 1 key worth...
According to the sourceop forums...
http://forums.sourceop.com/forums/32-TF2-Item-Trading-Buying-Selling
Keys are frequently bought and sold at around $1.80.
Alright so this is the part that gets interesting.
I had initially suspected that the key would stabilize around 7.33 ref, since right now the prices of ref, keys and their respective worth in USD fit perfectly.
However, the price drop of keys in refined metal doesn't seem like it's slowing down.
This is probably due to the lack of traders that use paypal and actual money in trading.
So what's going to happen? If this trend continues, the price of keys in ref will drop below the price of keys in real money.
Is the price of keys going to suddenly start stabilizing?
After months of steady decline, is the price of metal going to start going back up?
My guess is that keys will keep going down in ref, until more and more smart people start capitalizing on buying metal for real money, using that metal to buy cheap keys, then selling the key back for real money. This is what we call arbitrage. However, economy theory tells us that the prices will eventually stabilize back again.
If you want to read more about it, here's an old (but interesting) and pretty easy to understand article.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/arbitrage-and-equilibrium-in-the-team-fortress-2-economy/
