An original factory-sealed iPhone just sold at auction for $63,356.40. Thats more than 100 times what it sold for back in 2007, when it first hit the market. The phone’s owner, Karen Green, got it as a gift from her friends to celebrate her becoming a manager at PetSmart. The thing is, she already had three phone lines through Verizon, and at the time, Apple’s iPhone was exclusive to AT&T. So since switching phone plans is a hassle and the termination fees would have been outrageous. She instead elected to put the unopened and unused iPhone on the shelf.
She wrapped it up in a pair of felt pajamas for extra protection, and there it was forgotten.
That is until Green heard about an original, unopened iPhone that sold for $10,000 on eBay. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, I think I have the original,'” she said. “I called my son and I was like, ‘Go get the phone and make sure it’s not opened.”
In 2019 she went on the daytime TV show “Doctor & the Diva” as a part of a segment where viewers could have items appraised. Green’s iPhone was appraised for an estimated value of $5,000. But Green decided to wait a few more years, a choice that would pay off big time.
In October 2022, she heard about another factory-sealed, first-generation iPhone that sold at auction for nearly $40,000. Green was just starting up her own business, Tattician a cosmetic tattoo studio in New Jersey. “It took me almost a year to get it up and running, and when you don’t have an income for a year because you don’t have a place to work and you’re trying to get out on your own, your resources start to go,” she said.
The possibility of $40,000 was too enticing to pass up. “If I could hold off on the phone for like another 10 years, I probably would,” Green said. “The only reason why I am selling that phone is because I need to support this business.”
She reached out to the auction house behind the sale, LCG Auctions. “We got calls from everybody, but 99% of them didn’t have the same thing,” Mark Montero, founder of LCG Auctions, said. “But Karen had a really unique piece with a great story behind it.” Adding “It was shocking because we had gotten so many duds.”
Green’s original 8GB iPhone was appraised at $50,000 with an opening bid of $2,500. But brought in significantly more than that selling for over $63,000. We hope this seriously helps Green get Tattician to where she wants it to be.
