A few months ago we told you, you will surely remember, that a first-generation iPhone, from 2007, had been put up for auction and that the maximum bid had risen to $39,339, a more than reasonable and adjusted figure or an absolute and unjustifiable nonsense, as we want to see it, something that depends mainly on our worldview. In that piece of news, my colleague Isidro reflected, rightly in my opinion, that, in many cases, these purchases are carried out as an investment, since the buyer trusts that his purchase will appreciate over time.
This is, in truth, frankly risky, because just as their forecasts can be confirmed, many circumstances can also occur that cause just the opposite, that is, causing a huge drop in price, at least in the short and medium term. From a global economic downturn to the discovery of a missing warehouse stockpiling a few thousand brand-new, unopened 2007 iPhones, the hit can come anytime, anywhere, and in any way.
In other words, acquiring a device of this type It is only a safe investment if we do it in terms of collectingIn other words, because the personal satisfaction that having the object will cause us, in this case an unsealed first-generation iPhone, makes us feel compensated for the financial investment we have had to make to complete the purchase. In the rest of the cases, maybe not with the same possibilities statistically speaking, but we will be betting.
At the moment, however, it seems that this unique market is still in a bullish phase since, as we can see on the website of the auction house LCG Auctions, This weekend an unsealed 2007 iPhone was sold for a whopping $63,356.40. As with the model auctioned in October of last year, we’re talking about the 8 gigabyte model (it seemed like a lot at the time, remember?) and it hit the market for a suggested retail price of $599, so in this case the sale value at the auction has exceeded that of multiplying by one hundred its original sale price.
The history of this iPhone is also somewhat peculiar. Until now its owner, Karen Green, received it as a gift from her friends more than fifteen years ago. However, she was a Verizon customer, but this first generation of the iPhone only worked with the AT&T cellular network, so the gift, still unopened, ended up stored on a shelfwhere the sleep of the just was sleeping until the end of the last decade.
At that time, 2019, a first expert appraised its value at around $5,000, a tremendously conservative figure in view of the most recent auctions of other first-generation iPhones. Now the big question is what will happen in future auctions, will we continue to see its price grow or, on the contrary, has it already peaked and is it time to stagnate or fall? I have asked all the artificial intelligences I know, but none have been able to answer me.
What is clear and indisputable is that, whether it is the oldest generation or the most recent, hGetting an iPhone in the end can cost a pretty penny. And in Spain we cannot complain. Do you know that there are some countries in the world where its price makes it practically inaccessible to the vast majority of the population?
