Unopened first-generation iPhone sold for over P3 million
MANILA, Philippines — A first-generation iPhone which had never been opened was sold at an auction for $63,356.40 (nearly P3.5 million), over a hundred times the original price when it first debuted in 2007.
LCG Auctions handled the selling for the phone expected to go as high as $50,000 (P2.75 million). Biddings began at $2,500 (P137,000) and it sold after 27 bids to an unnamed individual from the United States.
The phone's original owner, Karen Green, had it appraised in 2019. At that time, the unopened eight-gigabyte iPhone was estimated to be worth $5,000 (P275,000).
Green originally received the phone from friends as a gift for getting a new job, but didn't open it as she had just gotten a new phone herself.
"I didn't want to get rid of my phone, and I figured, 'It's an iPhone, so it will never go out of date'," said Green on "The Doctor & The Diva" back then.
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LCG Auctions previously auctioned off a first-generation iPhone last October 2022 for $39,339 (P2.16 million) while a separate auction saw another phone go for $35,414 (P1.95 million).
"To discover an original, first-release model from 2007, still brand-new with its factory seal intact, is truly remarkable," LCG Auctions' Mark Montero told BBC News. "Only brand-new, unopened, and first-generation, [iPhones] in mint condition are valuable."
When the iPhone first came out in 2007 months after the late Steve Jobs presented it, it bore a 3.5-inch screen with a 2-megapixel camera, had iTunes but no app store, and ran on a 2G network.
For comparison, the most recent iPhone 14 Pro has 1 terabyte of storage and a 48-megapixel camera.
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