A First-Gen iPhone 4GB Just Sold for an Astronomical Amount. Do You Have One Laying Around? If you could use an extra $190,000 in your wallet, you might want to see if you have one in your old device graveyard.
By Dan Bova
If you have a junk drawer crammed with obsolete devices and wires, now might be a good time to dump it on the floor and start furiously rummaging through it.
A first-gen 4GB iPhone just sold at auction for $190,372.80, per ARS Technica.
"Why?" and, "I think I had one of those!" might be two thoughts running through your head. But before you get too excited about the latter, we'll address the former.
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According to LCG Auctions, the reason this phone went for so much is because it is something of a Holy Grail for vintage tech collectors. The 4GB was discontinued by Apple after only about two months of production due to slow sales. When it debuted on June 29, 2007, it sold for $499. But Apple customers had the option of paying an extra $100 to get 8G. Basically, everyone did that, so Steve Jobs pulled the plug on the 4GB.
But okay, maybe you were a cheapo, and you didn't spring for the 8GB version. Are you sitting on an obsolete gold mine? Again, sadly, probably not. The phone that sold at auction was in its original factory-sealed packaging and having never been taken out of the box, was obviously never activated.
The phone was expected to fetch between $50,000-$100,000 at auction. But after the smoke cleared on a 28-bid shootout, the winner captured their prize with a $158,644 final bid, plus administration costs.
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Are much more common first-gen 8GBs worth anything? Yes! Earlier this year, an 8GB iPhone sold at auction for $63,356.40. But again, don't get too excited. Its value was attached to the fact that it was never activated or opened, for that matter.
This all begs the question: who buys a very expensive phone and never even opens it? In the case of the 8GB sale, its owner, Karen Green, was a Verizon customer when she received the phone as a gift. The phone was locked to AT&T, and rather than switch carriers, Green just tossed it on a shelf and forgot about it.
So what's the lesson in all of this? Be on the lookout for the next piece of tech that kind of stinks or has some kind of annoying quirk, buy it, don't open it, and wait 20 or so years for some weirdo collector to offer you 1,000 times what you paid for it. Seems better than betting on crypto, right?
