Original iPhone auctioned for over $190,000

Updated on: 17 July 2023

Vilius Petkauskas
Deputy Editor

A factory sealed 2007 iPhone has been auctioned off for a record price – exceeding $190,000 – more than tripling the previous record made earlier this year.

The first-generation iPhones are proving to be a solid investment, a recent auction shows. An unknown buyer purchased the original 4GB Apple iPhone model released on June 29th, 2007, for a staggering sum of $190,372. Meanwhile, the initial asking price stood at $10K.

“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,” LCG Auctions said.

The deal marks another record-breaking auction for first-gen iPhones, with the recent record price of $63,000 set only in February 2023. Before that, the record for an iPhone was set in October 2022, when an original model in a similar condition was sold for almost $40,000.

“The phone’s provenance is pristine as the consignor was part of the original engineering team at Apple when the iPhone first launched. Collectors and investors would be hard-pressed to find a superior example,” the auctioneer said.

Apple’s creator Steve Jobs unveiled the first-gen iPhone in early 2007. The phone’s release kickstarted the mass use of smartphones and cemented Apple as a tech behemoth that has dominated the smartphone market to this day.

The price of the iPhone at the time of its release varied between $499 and $599, making the recent auction a whopping success for the device’s owner, who walked away with over 300 times more than the device’s original ceiling price.

However, though impressive, the sale price doesn’t even come close to the value of Apple’s first computer, the Apple 1. Released in 1976, the device sold for $600. In 2021, it was sold for more than $1.5 million at auction.

After Apple introduced the Vision Pro, its long-anticipated mixed reality headset, Twitter pundits half-jokingly suggested that people should “invest” into the first-gen headset to sell it at a profit several decades later.