Many years ago Steve Jobs gave a keynote speech at Macworld 2007 and unveiled the Apple iPhone. This game-changing device was quite expensive: the 4GB base model cost $500, the 8GB one cost $600, and that’s if you signed a 2-year contract with AT&T (which was Cingular at the time). Fast forward to 2023 and these are now pieces of digital history fetching high prices at auctions.
For example, a factory-sealed 8GB model sold in February retailed for $63,000, exceeding the original offer by $2,500. Believe it or not, it actually wasn’t all that expensive for an original iPhone.
An early release, factory sealed iPhone 4GB, went live on LCG Auctions a few weeks ago. The original estimate for this unit was between $50,000 and $100,000, and bidding began June 30 at just $10,000. Things are moving slow, 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. Damn, that’s a lot of money. Interestingly, that’s more money than the 8GB models fetch: In addition to the $64,000 one from February, there was a sealed 8GB model that sold yesterday and cost “only” $39,339.
Here’s how LCG Auctions explains why 4GB models are the most expensive to collect: “The original 4GB model is considered a ‘holy grail’ among iPhone collectors. Its extreme scarcity is directly related to its limited production. Debuting on June 29, 2007, alongside the 8GB model, the 4GB model was hampered by slow sales. Buyers opted to pay the extra $100 in exchange for double the storage space. The sales lag led Apple to make the decision to discontinue the 4GB model on September 5, 2007, just over two months after it was first released.
Funny, how does that work, right? The cheaper and less successful model ends up costing 3-4 times as much at auction as its more popular sibling some 16 years later. If you have an iPhone 2G sealed up in the attic, now’s the time to get it out.
PS. a modded iPhone X with USB-C sold for over $86,000 a couple of years ago, topping the price tag higher than a typical original 8GB iPhone. However, this auction for a 4GB model blew it out of the water.
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