Do you think the current prices for the iPhone 14 are skyrocketing? Then you must be shocked at how much an older copy fetched. At auction, one buyer had a whopping $63,000 for it.
It’s a huge cliché, but everything is getting more expensive. This, of course, also applies to the smartphone market. Nowadays you pay more than 1,000 euros for a new iPhone. That’s a big difference from Apple’s first device. That one cost $599 at launch. That first model, however, is now a gold mine.
An old iPhone is a gold mine
Indeed, yesterday an iPhone went out the door for the top price. During an auction, an original iPhone in unopened packaging fetched $52,797. On top of that there was also a 20 percent selling fee, forcing the buyer to pocket a total of $63,356. A hefty sum for a new phone.
In fact, never before has an original iPhone been sold for so much money. So do you still have an unopened box with a phone in it in your closet? Then you can do many fun things with that money.
This iPhone was offered by Karen Green, a tattoo artist who received the phone as a gift when she found a new job in 2007. Because the phone worked only with provider AT&T at the time, she decided not to use it. She didn’t want to lose her phone line with competitor Verizon. Therefore, the phone ended up in the closet.
When she heard that copies of the original iPhone were selling for hefty sums, she remembered that she still had one lying around. One that is now making a lot of money.
Quite a difference from now
At least for the specs, you don’t have to open the box. The first iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen and a 2 megapixel camera on the back. Compare that to the iPhone 14 Pro Max. This one has a 6.7-inch screen and a 48-megapixel camera.
