CS2 Doppler Phases: Ruby, Sapphire, Black Pearl, Phases 1-4
How to tell Doppler phases 1-4, Ruby, Sapphire, Black Pearl and Gamma Emerald apart, and what each costs across 36 markets in the June 2026 snapshot.
“Doppler” is one name on the market hash but thirteen different finishes in the game files. A Navaja Doppler starts around $120 while a Butterfly Knife Doppler in its rarest form clears five figures, and the only thing separating a $1,430 knife from an $8,760 one is which slice of the paint job landed on the blade. This guide covers how the phases work, how to identify each one, which knives come in which finish, and what the phases actually trade for, using price data pulled from the 36 marketplaces in our comparison as of the June 29, 2026 snapshot.
What a phase actually is
A common myth says the phase depends on the pattern seed, like Case Hardened blue gems. It does not. Each Doppler phase is a separate finish in the game’s item catalog with its own paint index. In the current CS2 item data, standard Doppler runs from index 415 to 421: Ruby is 415, Sapphire is 416, Black Pearl is 417, and Phases 1 through 4 are 418 through 421. Gamma Doppler occupies 568 (Emerald) through 572 (Phase 4), and the Glock-18 Gamma Doppler has its own block at 1119 to 1123.
The pattern seed still exists on every Doppler, but it only nudges where the texture sits on the blade. It cannot turn a Phase 3 into a Sapphire. When you unbox a Doppler, the game rolls which of the seven finishes you get, and that roll is what the whole phase market is built on.
Two more constants apply to every knife Doppler. The float range is locked to 0.00-0.08, so the only possible exteriors are Factory New and Minimal Wear, and StatTrak versions exist for all of them. If float ranges are new territory for you, the float and wear guide covers the mechanics.
Telling Phases 1-4 apart
The four standard phases are all a marbled swirl of the same palette, so identification comes down to which color dominates:
- Phase 1: dark base with both purple and blue streaks, roughly balanced. The least distinctive of the four.
- Phase 2: pink and purple dominate the blade. The loudest phase and the most expensive of the four on almost every knife.
- Phase 3: the darkest phase, mostly deep blue and black with green undertones. Usually the cheapest.
- Phase 4: blue takes over most of the blade with only small purple accents. The “clean blue” option.
The price data backs the folk ranking. On the Karambit Doppler, the Phase 2 median sits about 45% above Phase 3 in Factory New. On the Butterfly the gap is wider: Butterfly Phase 2 trades at more than double Phase 3. Phases 1, 3 and 4 usually cluster within about 10% of each other (the Butterfly, where Phase 4 carries its own premium, is the main exception), which matters if you just want the knife and not the specific swirl.
Ruby, Sapphire and Black Pearl: the gem tier
Above the numbered phases sit the three “gems”:
- Ruby: solid red with a pink-tinted swirl. No blue, no purple.
- Sapphire: uniform bright blue across the whole blade.
- Black Pearl: dark purple-black with an iridescent, oil-slick shimmer. Easy to confuse with a dark Phase 2 screenshot, unmistakable in motion.
Scarcity shows up directly in market supply. Counting the regular (non-StatTrak) listings for the 18 Doppler knives across our tracked marketplaces in the June snapshot, each numbered phase has between 5,100 and 6,900 live listings, Sapphire has about 4,700, Ruby about 3,400, and Black Pearl just 829. That is listings, not drop rates, but a six-to-eightfold supply gap between Black Pearl and any numbered phase tells you why it trades like a trophy.
Here is a snapshot detail most older guides get wrong in 2026: Ruby currently trades above Sapphire. Guides written years ago call Sapphire the king of the tier, and several still do, but in our June 2026 data the Factory New median for a Karambit Ruby is about $8,760 against $4,840 for the Sapphire, and the M9 shows the same split ($8,720 vs $4,810). Black Pearl pricing is the wildest of the three because supply is so thin: Karambit Black Pearl asks ranged from about $8,300 on the Chinese platforms to $16,000 on Western sites, often with only one or two listings per market.
Gamma Doppler and the Emerald
Gamma Doppler is the green-palette sibling introduced with the Gamma Case in June 2016. Its four numbered phases swap purple and blue for green, teal and black, and the gem slot belongs to the Emerald: a solid, uniform green blade that plays the same role Ruby and Sapphire play for standard Doppler.
Phase logic carries over with one twist: Phase 2 is the greenest of the numbered phases and the community treats it as the premium one, which again matches the board. The Karambit Gamma Doppler Phase 2 median is about $2,920 in Factory New against roughly $2,000 for Phases 3 and 4. The M9 Bayonet Gamma Doppler Emerald runs about $7,730, more than four times any of its numbered phases.
The odd one out in the whole family is the Glock-18 Gamma Doppler, the only gun with phases. It came from the 2021 Train Collection, exists in Souvenir but not StatTrak, and unlike the knives its float range runs 0.00-0.50, so Field-Tested copies exist. It is also a cheap ticket into the phase game: numbered phases sit around $160-170, undercut only by the smallest knives like the Navaja and Shadow Daggers, and the Emerald at roughly $600 is less than a tenth of what the same gem costs on a Karambit.
Which knives come in which Doppler
Not every knife gets every finish. From the current item catalog, the split is:
| Source | Released | Knives | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chroma, Chroma 2, Chroma 3 Cases | 2015-2016 | Bayonet, Flip, Gut, Karambit, M9 Bayonet | Doppler |
| Gamma, Gamma 2 Cases | 2016 | Bayonet, Flip, Gut, Karambit, M9 Bayonet | Gamma Doppler |
| Spectrum, Spectrum 2 Cases | 2017 | Bowie, Butterfly, Falchion, Huntsman, Shadow Daggers | Doppler |
| Prisma, Prisma 2 Cases | 2019-2020 | Navaja, Stiletto, Talon, Ursus | Doppler |
| Riptide, Dreams & Nightmares Cases | 2021-2022 | Bowie, Butterfly, Falchion, Huntsman, Shadow Daggers | Gamma Doppler |
| 2021 Train Collection | 2021 | Glock-18 (the only gun) | Gamma Doppler |
| Fever Case | 2025 | Nomad, Paracord, Skeleton, Survival | Doppler |
So the five classic Chroma knives plus the five Spectrum knives exist in both finishes, the Prisma and Fever knives are standard Doppler only, and no knife is Gamma-only. All 18 Doppler knives have the full set of seven phases including Ruby, Sapphire and Black Pearl; all Gamma knives have their five. The Fever Case additions from February 2025, like the Skeleton Knife Doppler, are the newest members and its Ruby already trades around $2,820, above the Talon Doppler Ruby.
One route you cannot take: trade-up contracts never produce knives, so unboxing and buying are the only ways in. The trade-up guide explains what contracts can and cannot do, and the case odds article covers how unlikely the unboxing route is (roughly 1 rare-item drop per 385 cases, before the phase roll even happens).
What phases cost right now
Factory New medians across the marketplaces in our comparison, June 29, 2026 snapshot, rounded to the nearest $10:
| Knife (FN, Doppler) | Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 | Phase 4 | Sapphire | Ruby |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Karambit | $1,390 | $2,080 | $1,430 | $1,430 | $4,840 | $8,760 |
| M9 Bayonet | $1,060 | $1,430 | $1,060 | $1,170 | $4,810 | $8,720 |
| Butterfly Knife | $2,460 | $4,880 | $2,360 | $2,970 | $6,870 | $11,210 |
| Bayonet | $430 | $550 | $430 | $460 | $1,330 | $1,910 |
| Talon Knife | $840 | $1,020 | $850 | $900 | $1,920 | $2,720 |
| Skeleton Knife | $690 | $910 | $670 | $730 | $1,520 | $2,820 |
| Navaja Knife | $120 | $140 | $120 | $120 | $220 | $320 |
And the Gamma side:
| Item (FN, Gamma) | Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 | Phase 4 | Emerald |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Karambit | $2,380 | $2,920 | $2,000 | $2,000 | $8,400 |
| M9 Bayonet | $1,390 | $1,820 | $1,420 | $1,390 | $7,730 |
| Bayonet | $560 | $730 | $550 | $590 | $1,820 |
| Shadow Daggers | $110 | $110 | $110 | $110 | $230 |
| Glock-18 | $160 | $170 | $160 | $160 | $600 |
Prices per phase and per marketplace update with every snapshot on the item pages, and the Doppler browse page lists the whole family sorted by price.
Three patterns worth pulling out of the table. First, the gem multiplier scales with the knife: a Karambit Ruby is about 6x its Phase 3, while a Navaja Ruby is under 3x. Second, the finishes swap places depending on the knife: on the five Chroma-era classics, Gamma phases run 25-70% above standard Doppler (Gamma Karambit Phase 1 at $2,380 against $1,390), while on the Spectrum-era knives standard Doppler is the premium finish, with the Butterfly Phase 2 at $4,880 against $2,720 for its Gamma twin. Third, Shadow Daggers Gamma phases are nearly flat at around $110 because the model itself is unloved, which makes the Shadow Daggers Emerald at roughly $230 the cheapest green gem in the game.
How to verify a phase before you pay
Where you buy determines how much verification work you have to do.
On the Steam Community Market, all seven phases of a knife sell under one listing name, “Karambit | Doppler (Factory New)”, with no phase field. The listing thumbnail shows the actual item, so a Ruby among Phase 2s is visible if you look carefully, but nothing stops you from buying the wrong phase on autopilot, and sellers of gems rarely list there anyway since the listing price anchors to the common phases.
On third-party marketplaces, phases are listed as separate items. Every market in our comparison carries names like “Karambit | Doppler Phase 2” or “Karambit | Doppler Ruby” as distinct entries, which is exactly how our per-phase pages price them. In fact, the newest Doppler knives from the Fever Case are listed only per phase on these markets, with no phase-agnostic listing at all.
From an inspect link, the phase is encoded in the paint index, which any inspect tool reads out. In-game, the item card does not print the phase name, so for trades the paint index is the ground truth: 415 Ruby, 416 Sapphire, 417 Black Pearl, 418-421 Phases 1-4, and 568-572 for Gamma with Emerald first.
Two float-related notes that save money. Because the entire range is 0.00-0.08, a Minimal Wear Doppler at 0.071 looks essentially identical to a Factory New one at 0.069, and the market prices this honestly: in our snapshot, MW medians sit within about 5% of FN on the numbered Karambit phases, with the biggest gap on gems at around 13% (Ruby: $8,760 FN vs $7,650 MW). Buying MW gems is a legitimate discount, not a compromise you can see. StatTrak runs the other way: StatTrak Karambit Phase 2 listings trade about 6% below the regular version ($1,950 against $2,080 median), so the counter comes at a small discount, not a premium.
Where the value hides
If you are phase-shopping with a budget, the June 2026 board suggests a few concrete plays. The cheapest real gem in the game is the Navaja Doppler Sapphire at about $220, with the Navaja Ruby at $320 and its Black Pearl around $390: the full trophy tier for under $400 if you can live with the smallest knife in the game. On the Gamma side the entry tickets are the Shadow Daggers Emerald at $230, the Gut Knife Emerald near $460 and the Glock Emerald at roughly $600. And if the goal is maximum knife per dollar rather than a specific color, Phase 3 is the systematic answer: same knife, same float range, reliably the bottom of the price ladder, with the cheapest knives page covering the non-Doppler floor.
At the top end, gems behave more like collectibles than skins: thin supply (829 Black Pearl listings worldwide across every knife and market we track), wide spreads between platforms, and price discovery that happens in single trades. That cuts both ways, as the skin investment guide discusses, and if you ever want to exit a gem, the platform spread matters more than for any liquid skin, which is where the cash-out guide and the most expensive knives list are worth a read before you list anything.