Media reports says an unopened, first-generation iPhone from 2007 has been sold for a record-breaking US$190,000 at auction. The sale price is more than 317 times the phone's original 2007 retail price of US$599.00.
Insider says the 4 GB factory-sealed device was sold for US$190,372.80 at auction on Sunday night. The phone reportedly hit the auction block at the end of June, and was only expected to fetch between US$50,000 and US$100,000.
The sale shattered the record set in February, when an unopened, first-generation 8 GB iPhone was sold at auction for US$63,356.40. In October 2022, an 8 GB original iPhone, also still factory-sealed, was sold for US$39,339.60.
The original iPhone sold at auction Sunday belonged to a member of the original engineering team at Apple when the iPhone first launched.
When late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs reportedly unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, the device came with either 4 GB or 8 GB of storage, a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a 2-megapixel camera, and a web browser. Consumers favored the 8 GB model, and Apple discontinued the 4 GB phone soon after, so those are rarer.
The 4 GB version was later replaced by a 16 GB iPhone, and Apple has continued ramping up its storage options to get us to the 1TB maximum — the equivalent of 1,000 gigabytes — we see available on the latest iPhones.
The most expensive iPhone that Apple sells today, the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 1 TB of storage, starts at US$1,599.
