Someone just paid over $39,000 for a 15-year-old iPhone—more than 50 times its original price
October 17, 2022
The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiling the first iPhone in 2007. (David Paul Morris | Getty Images News | Getty Images)
How much would you pay for a piece of high-tech history? For one collector, the answer was just over $39,000.
That’s how much the bidder paid this weekend for a factory-sealed model of the first-edition iPhone — their winning bid topped out at $39,339.60.
The 8GB smartphone was sold by LCG Auctions on Sunday. The device originally retailed for $599 in 2007 — or $852 in 2022 after inflation — and quickly saw its price climb from the opening bid of $2,500 to well into five figures.
“We expected the bidding for this item to be fervent and it did not disappoint as a handful of avid and sophisticated collectors drove the price from just over $10,000 on Sunday afternoon to this record-setting amount by Sunday night,” LCG Auctions founder Mark Montero said in a statement.
“We congratulate the winners, our consignors and all of the bidders for making this one of the most active auctions in our history.”
Steve Jobs first unveiled the original iPhone in 2007, and Apple quickly sold millions of units.
The phone that sold over the weekend was advertised as being in “exceptional condition”, with “pristine” labels beneath the plastic seal and no aftermarket stickers on the box.
In addition to the 8GB of storage the phone also featured a 2-megapixel camera.
For context, the base model of the recently-released iPhone 14 has 128GB of storage and sports a 12-megapixel main camera with an ultra wide lens.