Many years ago Steve Jobs delivered a keynote address at Macworld 2007 and unveiled the Apple iPhone. This revolutionary device was quite pricey – the base 4GB model cost $500, the 8GB one was $600 and that was if you signed a 2-year contract with AT&T (which was going by Cingular at the time). Fast forward to 2023 and these are now pieces of digital history that fetch high prices at auctions.
For example, a factory sealed 8GB model sold in February went for $63,000, blowing past the original bid of $2,500. Believe it or not, that was actually not all that expensive for an original iPhone.
A first release, factory sealed iPhone 4GB was posted on LCG Auctions a few weeks ago. The original estimate for this unit was in the $50,000-$100,000 range and bidding started on June 30 at just $10,000. Things move slowly, reaching $42,000 by yesterday. And then things went off the rails.
After a short but intense bidding war, the winning bid is a whopping $190,372. Whew, that’s a lot of money. Interestingly, it’s more money than 8GB models fetch – besides the $64K one from February, there was a sealed 8GB model that sold yesterday and went for “only” $39,339.
Here is how LCG Auctions explains why 4GB models are the pricier collectible: “The original 4GB model is considered a “Holy Grail” amongst iPhone collectors. Its extreme scarcity is directly related to its limited production. Debuting on June 29th, 2007, alongside the 8GB model, the 4GB model was hampered by slow sales. Buyers chose to pay the $100 upcharge in exchange for double the storage space. The lagging sales resulted in Apple making the decision to discontinue the 4GB model on September 5th, 2007, just over two months after it was first released.”
Funny, how that works out, isn’t it? The cheaper, less successful model ends up costing 3-4 times more at auction than its more popular sibling some 16 years later. If you have a sealed iPhone 2G in the attic, now is the time to dig it out.
PS. a modded iPhone X with USB-C sold for over $86,000 a couple of years ago, fetching a higher price than a typical original iPhone 8GB. This auction for a 4GB model blew it out of the water, though.
