Dota 2 Couriers: From Basic Drops to Rare Baby Roshans

The courier used to be a shared team resource that everyone fought over. Since the 7.23 Outlanders update on November 26, 2019, every player gets their own courier automatically, and it starts flying once your hero reaches level 5. That change turned the courier into a personal cosmetic you see all game, and the market reflects it: dota2skins.gg tracks 851 courier entries.

This post climbs the courier market one tier at a time, using a single family of couriers, the Baby Roshans, as the running example.

Tier one: the everyday courier

The plain Baby Roshan was released on October 30, 2012 and has come out through the store and a long list of treasures since. That steady supply makes it a good baseline.

As of October 14, 2026, the Baby Roshan had a lowest Steam ask of $10.42 across 86 listings, with 1,624 buy orders topping out at $8.65. That's a liquid, boring market, which is exactly what you want when you only care about the look.

It's also a case where Steam isn't the expensive option. The cheapest third-party copy was $10.41 on LIS-SKINS, and most other cash marketplaces listed it between $10.93 and $12.54. For cheap couriers with deep Steam books, third-party discounts can disappear.

Tier two: the same courier with a prefix

Quality variants of the same courier trade as separate items. The Baby Roshan family shows the spread:

The commemorative event qualities, Frozen and Corrupted from Frostivus 2013, roughly double the price. Cursed, from Diretide 2013, looks like a fivefold jump, but with two listings and a $23.58 best bid, that $104.97 is one seller's ask, not a market.

Tier three: Unusual couriers

An Unusual courier carries a particle effect from an Ethereal gem in a rare socket, sometimes recolored by a Prismatic gem. Unusual couriers are unboxed at a very low chance from treasures, and only couriers can hold Ethereal effects.

The jump is large. Unusual Baby Roshan had a lowest ask of $375.43 across 20 listings, with buy orders up to $298.01. Steam lists every Unusual Baby Roshan under the same name, whatever its effect or color, so that ask is the floor for the least wanted combination. Effects and colors get their own deep dive elsewhere on this blog.

Tier four: event trophies

At the top sit couriers that were never sold at all.

• Golden Baby Roshan went to players who entered the Sugar Rush Hall of Fame during Diretide 2012 by killing the event's Roshan fastest. It came socketed with Ethereal: Touch of Midas and Prismatic: Midas Gold.
• Platinum Baby Roshan went to Sugar Rush Hall of Fame entrants in Diretide 2013.

Their supply was fixed the day those events ended. As of October 14, 2026, Platinum Baby Roshan had no Steam listings at all. The cheapest copy tracked anywhere was $3,014.85 on LIS-SKINS, and Steam held 175 buy orders, all at exactly $2,000.00. Unusual Golden Baby Roshan looked similar: no Steam listing, a DMarket ask of $5,157.89 and 106 Steam buy orders, again capped at $2,000.00.

There's a related category that never reaches the market: couriers Valve made account-bound. Collector's Baby Roshan 2017 and 2018, for example, went to owners of those years' Battle Passes who reached level 2000. Neither can be traded or marketed.

New Baby Roshans keep arriving

The family is still growing. The Trove of Terror treasure released on October 7, 2026 includes a milestone reward: opening 40 chests grants R'shan the Eternal, a new look for Roshan that comes with a matching Baby Roshan courier. Those items weren't tracked on dota2skins.gg when this was written, and milestone rewards don't always reach the market, so check the item's tags before assuming it can be bought or sold.

Each new variant adds to the family rather than replacing it. That's part of why the plain Baby Roshan stays cheap while the event trophies stay rare: one has been reissued many times, the others were handed out once.

Why the top end leaves Steam

The $2,000 wall isn't a coincidence. Valve caps a Steam Wallet balance at $2,000 and a single Community Market listing at $1,800. A buyer can't bid more than they can hold, and a seller can't ask more than the listing limit. So any courier worth more than that has a Steam order book that stops at the cap and real trading that happens elsewhere.

Below the cap, Steam and cash marketplaces stay close for liquid couriers. On October 14, 2026, the best Steam buy order for an Unusual Baby Roshan was $298.01, almost exactly the $299.00 cheapest ask on DMarket. If you're selling a courier in this range, compare an instant sale into the Steam bid, paid in wallet funds, with a cash listing that may take longer to fill.

Above the cap, valuation gets harder. When the Steam bid is pinned at the cap, it says only that demand reaches at least that high. The actual price is set on cash marketplaces, by middlemen, or in private trades, and that's where scams cluster too.

A checklist before you buy a courier

• Decide what you're buying. If you want a courier you'll enjoy in games, tier one or two is fine and the market is liquid. Tiers three and four are collectibles with thin books.
• Read the full listing. For Unusual couriers, check the effect and the color in the listing details. The market name alone won't tell you.
• Use buy orders as your reference. Asks on thin books, like the Cursed Baby Roshan, can sit far above anything a buyer will pay.
• Above $1,800, use established marketplaces. Compare fees, payout methods and protection on the marketplaces overview before an expensive deal.
• Browse the whole category. The courier catalog lists all 851 entries with prices across marketplaces.

In the Baby Roshan family, the $10 courier and the $3,000 trophy share the same model. What you pay for in between is scarcity: an event that ended, an effect that rarely rolled, or a quality that was handed out only once.