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February 20, 2023 | 22:57
An original first-generation iPhone sold at auction on Sunday for more than 100 times its original selling price.
LCG Auctions
A first-generation iPhone still in its factory-sealed box sold for an eye-watering $63,356.40 at auction on Sunday.
The unlocked 8-GB iPhone was estimated to go for at least $50,000, but fetched even more money.
The Apple relic sold for more than 100 times its original price – of $599 in 2007 – after 27 people bid online via LCG Auctions. Bidding started at $2,500 and opened on February 2.
At the time, the first release smartphone featured an innovative touchscreen, a web browser and a 2-megapixel camera. Consumers could choose between the 4 GB storage model for $499 or the 8 GB storage model for $599 when the phone first went on sale on June 29, 2007.
Steve Jobs had unveiled the new product known as the iPhone months earlier at a San Francisco trade show called MacWorld. It received Time Magazine’s “invention of the year” and quickly became Apple’s best-selling product.
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The lucky seller of the $63,000 iPhone, Karen Green, said she had received the phone as a gift from friends to start a new job in 2007.
However, Green already had a new phone and did not want to switch wireless carriers to activate the iPhone, she said.
It sat unopened on her shelf for 12 years until she had it reviewed on the daytime TV show “The Doctor & The Diva” in 2019.
“I didn’t want to get rid of my phone and I thought, ‘It’s an iPhone, so it’s never going to expire,'” she said during the show’s “Treasure Hunt” segment.
The show’s resident appraiser valued it at $5,000 at the time.
But in October, Green saw an unopened, first-release iPhone sell for $39,339 in a previous auction held by LCG.
She told Insider that after storing the phone all these years, she decided it was time to sell to support her new business — a cosmetic tattoo studio in New Jersey.
“If I could hang on to the phone for another 10 years, I probably would,” Green told the paper. “The only reason I’m selling that phone is because I need to support this business.”
The phone was purchased by a private buyer whose name has not been disclosed.
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