The original 2007 iPhone has become something of a collector’s item, with a still-sealed model selling for $63,356.40 (~£48,408) back in February. But now another auction has made that big-money sale look like pocket change.
LCG Auctions has facilitated the sale of another factory-sealed, first-generation iPhone, and this one has gone for $190,372.80 (~£145,383) after administrative costs are taken into account. That’s a massive 38,051 per cent markup on the cost of buying one in 2007.
Ironically, it’s this model’s unpopularity that ensured it set a new record selling price. While previous auctions have been for sealed 8GB models, this was for the 4GB version — an alarmingly small amount of storage even 16 years ago.
With twice the storage available for $100 more, the 4GB version evidently didn’t attract many buyers, and it was discontinued after just 68 days on sale. This made this unopened model what LCG Auctions describes as “a ‘Holy Grail’ amongst iPhone collectors”.
With a starting price of $10,000, the auctioneers expected the handset to sell for between $50,000 and $100,000 but, 28 bids later, it reached a final sale price of $158,644 plus admin costs.
The mystery buyer is unlikely to take the phone from its box but, if they were to, they’d likely be disappointed by the handset’s performance in 2023.
The 4GB capacity is even more of a drawback today than it was 16 years ago, with modern iPhones offering between 128GB and 1TB in storage. And with only 2G connectivity, web browsing would feel a touch on the slow side (and wouldn’t even work in the US, where the service has already been turned off).
The 3.5-inch screen’s 320 x 480 resolution will make even today’s cheapest handsets look pin sharp, and the 2-megapixel camera would struggle to capture memorable shots, too.
At the time, it was a game changer, however, and it turned smartphones from a niche market to the worldwide default. While it wasn’t clear exactly how significant it would prove to be at the time, its importance was still recognised by Time magazine, which named the phone its 2007 invention of the year.
