Back in 2012, Valve added the "Something Special for Someone Special" to Team Fortress 2. It was a $100 cosmetic item which allowed the owner to "propose" to another player. If the proposal was accepted, a notification would be publically broadcast to anyone currently playing Team Fortress 2.
Naturally, people immediately started taking advantage. After all, $100 to get a message out to 50,000 players seemed like a great deal.
At the time it seemed like a new ring was bought every 5 minutes. But years later, I'm left with a single question.
How many of these rings people buy?
Theoretically, it should be possible to see how many players have rings in their inventory, since items are publically searchable.
Best Answer
According to backpack.tf (links will be provided) there are 6,446 actual rings in people's inventories, and another 225 of the tools that have not been sent to anyone but can still be sent. So at the time of this post, there have been (6446 / 2 ) + 225 = 3448 Something Special For Someone Special's purchased. Of course, this is only from public backpacks, as there could be more hidden in private accounts, so this number is only a rough estimate.
Backpack.tf: Something Special For Someone Special
Backpack.tf: Something Special For Someone Special (the ring itself)