Player Deletes $6,700 Golden Frying Pan, Team Fortress 2 item for the Second Time

A Team Fortress 2 player has deleted one of the rarest and most valuable in-game items — the Golden Frying Pan — for the second time. The item, worth around $6,700, vanished from the player’s inventory mid-match. This unusual move has caused ripples in the TF2 economy and drawn massive attention from the community, with many recalling that the same player destroyed the exact same item once before.

The Golden Frying Pan is not just another cosmetic weapon. It works like a regular frying pan but has a unique sound and turns defeated opponents into golden statues. Its drop rate is microscopic: first, you need to get a rare type of drop in TF2, and then, within that, have the incredibly low chance that it’s the Golden Frying Pan. Since its introduction in 2013, only 435 of them have ever existed. While the Golden Wrench is even rarer at 100 units, the frying pan remains one of the most sought-after treasures in the game. In 2024, it was worth under $6,000, but prices have climbed sharply this year — meaning that deleting one isn’t just throwing away a virtual weapon, it’s effectively destroying thousands of dollars in value.

The player behind this is known as Gregarious. Social media screenshots show him deleting the Golden Frying Pan in the middle of a match, with multiple witnesses present. The same thing happened once before, when Gregarious erased his first pan, only to convince Steam support to restore it afterward. That earlier incident baffled TF2 fans, especially because there was video proof of the destruction. According to community rumors, the first deletion happened while he was under the influence.

This time, tracking websites confirm that Gregarious still had the Golden Frying Pan in early August, but it’s now gone from his Steam inventory. In the blink of an eye, his TF2 backpack value fell from $7,400 to about $28. There’s no sign it will be restored again, especially because Valve’s official policy states they do not replace deleted items. Steam’s reasoning is that restoring items could require duplicating them or taking them from innocent users, which would harm the trading economy by lowering item values.

Deleting valuable items is not unheard of in TF2 history. Rare item owners can find themselves constantly swarmed by other players, both in-game and after logging off. Some owners decide they don’t want the attention. In 2015, a player named Auricom5 shocked the community by deleting his Golden Frying Pan mid-game, triggering hundreds of profile comments and even leading him to adopt a cheeky “Are you still mad?” status. More than a decade later, people are still posting about it.

Greg’s latest move is sparking the same kind of attention. His Steam profile was flooded with messages this morning, but it’s now locked down. This hasn’t stopped discussions from spreading across TF2 forums, where some players are even jokingly calling him a “hero” for reducing the total number of pans and “fixing” the market.

Deleting one of the rarest weapons twice is a bold move in a game where many people grind for years or pay thousands to own such an item. In the complex economy of TF2, where scarcity drives prices, even a single deletion can shift perceived value. Gregarious, with over 10,000 hours logged in the game, has now done it twice — making him a unique, if controversial, figure in the game’s history.

Some forum and Reddit users claim that Gregarious’s Discord friends reported he was heavily drunk when the second deletion happened. If that’s true, it serves as a strange warning: drunk gaming can be dangerous for your inventory and very costly for your wallet.