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The iPhone 15 Ultra is rumored to be Apple’s most expensive phone to date, but even that flagship will dwarf the price an unopened, original iPhone just fetched at auction — a record $63,356 ( approximately £52,635 / AU$91,630).
Before you start rummaging through your drawers, the key to that high price was that the auctioned iPhone was “factory sealed,” meaning even the cellophane wrapper is still intact. This is a big deal for collectors, which meant someone was willing to pay the price of a Tesla Model 3 ($42,990 / £42,990 / AU$64,300) with enough spare to throw in a Subaru Impreza.
A similar original iPhone unit sold at auction in October 2022 for $39,339 (about £32,680 / AU$56,890), meaning their value is skyrocketing. In 2007, a first-generation 8GB iPhone would have cost $599, which means that the price has increased more than 105 times.
According to Business Insider (opens in new tab), the original owner of the phone, Karen Green (a cosmetic tattoo artist), got the phone as a gift in 2007 for starting a new job. There was only one problem; at the time, iPhones were tied to AT&T, and Green already had three phone lines tied to Verizon. So she left the phone unopened on a shelf for years.
A few years ago, Green heard about the rising prices of original iPhones and went on a daytime TV show called Doctor & the Diva to have it appraised, where it was estimated to be worth $5,000. Since then, prices of factory-sealed iPhones have skyrocketed, hitting the $30,000 mark last year and now going for double that.
Of course, the LCG auction house (opens in new tab) who sold this record iPhone thinks prices will continue to rise. The listing says these types of examples are “widely regarded as a blue-chip asset among high-end collectors” and that “many believe the space is still in its infancy.” Considering the prices achieved by other bits of retro technology, such as the Leica O-series, it could well be a good thing.
Analysis: expensive, but far from the most expensive
Combining significance and rarity is a formula that sets auction houses ablaze — and while a factory-sealed original iPhone ticks both boxes, it’s far from the most expensive example of retro Apple technology.
For example, an original Apple 1 computer sold for $442,118 in December 2022, while a prototype only a few months earlier sold for nearly $700,000 (opens in new tab). Part of the reason for these incredible prices is that Apple only made 200 versions of the Apple-1, of which only about 175 were sold.
But even this holy grail of computers pales in comparison to a recent record from a vintage camera. In June 2022, the Leica-O stunned the photographic world selling for a world record $15.1 million (opens in new tab), which was nearly five times the high estimate. This, understandably, made it the most expensive camera ever made.
That example was one of only 23 prototypes made by Ernst Leitz Wetzlar (the eventual founder of Leica) and was apparently also the personal camera of Oskar Barnack, the inventor of the 35mm Leica camera. So until an original iPhone is discovered that was also the main phone used by Steve Jobs, the record for Apple phones could remain at the relatively low $63,356.
If you’re feeling despondent that you didn’t get your hands on your original iPhone, take heart by reading our 2007 Apple iPhone review – which gave it four stars and concluded that “it could do more”.