This Unopened 2007 iPhone Could Be Worth As Much As $60,000

The most expensive iPhone you can buy new from Apple is the one-terabyte iPhone 14 Pro Max at a hefty $1,599. But with a 6.7-inch display and three cameras, it's a lot of phone for the money. However, even that price has nothing on the price of an unopened iPhone on the collector's market.

A sealed 2007 iPhone is currently up for grabs by Wright Auctions is estimated to sell for between $40,000 and $60,000, according to the New York Times. For that price, you could buy roughly 37 iPhone 14 Pro Maxes and have enough left over for an Apple Watch Ultra. Or, you could buy 60 M1 Chip MacBook Airs for the same price. 

2007 marked the first year the iPhone went on sale, and it forever altered the timeline of technology for the foreseeable future. Business oriented pocket-PCs and BlackBerrys has existed for years prior, but the iPhone was the smartphone that came into regular use by the public. Suffice to say, it was a big deal.

The specific iPhone up for auction is an 8GB model that originally retailed for $599 when George W. Bush was president. Now it's worth upwards of 100 times more than the original sticker price. Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone familiar with the vintage electronics collector market, this stratospheric price tag for an iPhone isn't all that unusual and has a few times in the past. 

It's unlikely the phone will ever leave its shrink-wrap and cardboard sarcophagus. First-generation iPhones are basically useless as actual phones, and this relic is little more than a heavy glorified yet historically significant iPod touch in 2023. The 8GB of storage won't hold much, and iOS 16, the current iPhone operating system, is not compatible. Unwrapping a sealed original iPhone to use would be like driving a factory original Ford Model T to work. Using an antique like that would only serve to devalue it.

The auction goes live on March 30th through Wright Auctions.