Do you think Valve knows skins would become so sought after / popular

I wasn't around in the early days of CS:GO. Do you think Valve anticipated the huge market for skins when they introduced them to the game?

Considering it's always been pretty expensive to open the cases, wondering if the saw a point where there would be items worth hundreds/thousands.

How does the CS:GO skin market compare to other games? I don't follow other games as much but would think that they wouldn't have as many gambling or case opening sites.