Definition
A sticker scrape is the in-game action of wearing down a sticker that is already applied to a weapon. Once a sticker is stuck on, you can scrape it through the weapon inspect menu; each scrape moves the sticker one fixed step toward being fully worn off. The wear runs on a 0%–100% scale — 0% is freshly applied, 100% means the sticker is gone and the slot is empty again.
Scraping is irreversible. There is no un-scrape, no restore, no way to add a percentage back. A scrape also cannot be undone by removing and re-applying — once you scrape, that copy of the sticker carries the wear permanently, and removing it with a sticker-removal tool destroys it outright.
What it does to the look
Each step erodes the sticker's surface from the edges inward and dulls its shine. On paper stickers the colour fades and the print breaks up. On holo and foil stickers the rainbow shimmer thins out as the metallic layer is scraped away, which is why heavily-scraped holos read almost matte. Players scrape on purpose to "fit" a sticker into a skin's art — exposing chrome on a knife, blending a logo into the weapon's paint, or roughing up a clean finish for a worn aesthetic.
What it does to the price
Both directions are real. For a plain sticker, scraping usually destroys value — a fresh applied sticker is worth more than a 70%-scraped one. But for collector crafts the opposite can happen: a well-placed, intentionally-scraped Katowice 2014 holo on the right skin can sell for more than the same sticker fresh, because the craft is now one-of-one. The rule is taste plus rarity, not a formula.
The step count, the exact wear math, and which crafts are worth scraping are covered in how to scrape stickers correctly. The full sticker economy lives in the stickers and capsules pillar.