Someone paid almost $40,000 for a smartphone. No, it wasn’t gold-plated or diamond encrusted, it was a first-generation iPhone in its factory-sealed box, this occurred at an LCG Auctions event.
This version is no ordinary iPhone though, the device is totally factory sealed and has never been used ever. Technology, as you’ve no doubt noticed, has come a long way since 2007, when then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.
The 15-year-old phone probably has a stone-dead battery (possibly bloated and unusable), but that should not matter as the collector who bought it is not likely to open it to find out. The «pristinely» packaged device was the 8GB model, which sold for about $600 with a two-year AT&T contract in 2007 — that’s about $860 today. So, the buyer paid more than 45 times its original cost when adjusted for inflation.
«The iPhone is one of the most important and pervasive inventions of our lifetime,» LCG said in the description. «It was named Time magazine’s Invention of the Year in 2007.»
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Apple products are known to sell for large amounts at auction if they are old and still in good condition. Apple-1 computers can go for as much as $500,000 and older iPods have also fetched large sums at auction.
If you’ve got any stuff like that which is still in good nick, you could be sitting on a small fortune.
