back to article Apple's first iPhone now COSTS MORE than golden mobe 5S

Out-of-date "vintage" iPhones are being sold on eBay for more than £1,000 as fanbois yearn for the good old days when Apple was golden. One "super rare retro" first generation iPhone 2G is being sold for £1,399.99, with the seller claiming it is a "vintage collector's item". The unlocked old iPhone comes in its original box, …

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  1. Ralph B

    That Explains It

    I never really understand the business of Gazelle.com. They only buy old devices, and never seemed to sell them anywhere. Clearly, they've been waiting for them to become "vintage" and are now selling them for ridiculous prices to hipster idiots on eBay.

    In any case, I see they are no longer offering to buy the iPhone 2G, so I guess that must mean they have them all.

    1. Ralph B

      Re: That Explains It

      OK, don't bother telling me. A couple of seconds' research tells me that Gazelle.com resell the tat they buy on Amazon and eBay. (No 2G's on off though.)

  2. jake Silver badge

    One wonders ...

    ... what my perfectly functional 13 year-old Nokia 5185, which actually still works in Sonoma Valley's so-called "dead" zones, might be worth. Sometimes a telephone being a telephone is far more important than flashing a hand-held toy ;-)

    1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      Re: One wonders ...

      I'd be quite happy with a Nokia 6210.

      It could do with an updated battery to increase battery life even more. Leave the rest as is. Mind you, this mobile used to idle around for two weeks and I still could make a phone call. Compared to this those new smart phones can at best be described as portable - from one power plug to the next usb port.

    2. Great Bu

      Don't plan the retirement quite yet.......

      Turns out it's worth $15.99......

      http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nokia-5185i-Verizon-Cellular-Phone-/281169162443?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item4176fcf0cb

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Don't plan the retirement quite yet.......

        I'm already retired (kinda), and it's not for sale. That was rhetorical.

        1. Lusty

          Re: Don't plan the retirement quite yet.......

          "I'm already retired (kinda), and it's not for sale. That was rhetorical."

          I don't think the comment was answering you so much as highlighting how pointless your jibber jabber is whenever a phone thread comes up. In case it wasn't clear...nobody cares about your crappy old Nokia so you don't need to keep mentioning it.

  3. John H Woods Silver badge

    are being are being s̶o̶l̶d̶ offered

    FTFY

  4. Andrew Jones 2

    Oooooo I have a K800i and a C905.....

    I wonder if anyone would like to buy my Orange M3788e complete with flashing aerial upgrade....

    1. Andrew Jones 2

      A quick search suggests not only are people selling the m3788e but you can also buy brand new batteries for it on ebay too!

    2. Tachikoma

      Aaaah flashing aerial upgrades, those were the days... I wanted one for my Nokia 7110 but I think the aerial was fixed into place and couldn't be replaced without dismantling the entire phone. Speaking of which, my Nokia 7110 with original 1999 battery still last longer than my Galaxy S3... I think lunchtime will be spent researching what WAP pages are still kicking around so I can relive that monochrome revolution.

      1. Tommy Pock

        Don't bother. I still use my 7110, it's dial-up only (no GPRS in those days) and there's no numbers left to connect it to

      2. Philip Lewis

        WAP - Haven't heard that acronym in a long time. WAP was, even at the time of its launch, conclusive proof that the Telco industry needed a huge kick in the butt.

  5. Slacker@work
    Holmes

    "...arguably stupid, folk..."

    I don't hear any arguments for their quotient of sense - a fool and their money as the saying goes!

    1. Sander van der Wal
      Trollface

      That is the problem with having lots of sense. It makes making money so easy that you always end up at the wrong side of the quotient.

    2. Psyx

      "No scammers. I have heard them all before."

      ...whenever I open my mouth.

  6. Darren Coleman

    Um, nope

    Finding bizarro eBay auctions seems like pretty low hanging fruit journalistically. Slow news day? :)

    Auctions listing something for a ridiculous price ≠ items actually selling for those prices.

    1. Goldmember

      Re: Um, nope

      "Auctions listing something for a ridiculous price ≠ items actually selling for those prices."

      That's true, but a Completed Listings search reveals the fact that buyers actually do buy old 2G tat at high prices. Such as this one, "like new" which sold for £250 + postage.

      It may not be the £800 as mentioned in the article, but it's still a hell of a lot.

      1. Philip Lewis

        Re: Um, nope

        I have one in a drawer somewhere - "there's gold in dem der hils"

  7. John Robson Silver badge

    Ebay price fluctuations...

    Are often due to stock limitations. Changing the price on a BIN doesn't actually lose the sales history - when they get back in stock they'll drop the price again.

    Stopping the auction however - lose the history, lose future sales...

  8. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    Bugger!

    I gave away my Sony Ericsson P800, for which I had original box, manuals, charger and 3 spare styluseseses. If I'd kept it, I could now be RICH! After all, it didn't even have GPRS... The friend I gave it to was still using it well after the iPhone came out.

    Sadly I also got rid of my Motorola MicroTac years ago. Although I think the 'micro' was a bit cheeky in the name, as a belt clip or bag was the only realistic way to carry it. I miss the days of having to pull up the aerial before making a call, and then flip the phone open. Well OK, maybe not the aerial bit, particularly as there was a point when some of those were fakes and the phones had internal antennae. But I really do miss the flip-phone format. No-one seems to do them any more, which is a real shame.

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: But I really do miss the flip-phone format.

      Me too! Flip open to answer, flip shut to hang up, seems perfect to me, keeps the handset small but when open it's the right shape to fit against your ear and still be close to your mouth (and it's just like original star trek communicators!)

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: But I really do miss the flip-phone format.

        and it's just like original star trek communicators!

        Except that bad mannered Catpain Kirk was always using his on speakerphone. What an annoying man to have to share a train carriage with...

    2. Rukario

      Re: Bugger!

      I gave away my P800, P900, and P910, with that strange keyboard on the inside of the flap. The P990, though, is still a solid backup phone. Not sure of the fates of the other two, but the P900 was replaced by a Blackberry Z10*.

      * DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for the tastes of my friends.

  9. Jerky Jerk face

    Im a fan of real buttons on my phones. Still using a HTC desire-Z and loving it, battery still good and i still get to see my whole screen AND have an entire qwerty keyboard - rather than a screen with more pixels than ive had hot dinners and the battery the size of a song birds bladder.

    I hope they (HTC or anyone else) make a new one.... But apart of thinner and lighter i cant think of anything its missing, perhaps an impossibly overkill camera would be nice :)

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      >Im a fan of real buttons on my phones.

      Yeah, even on an Android phone I prefer the three system buttons to be physical... its irritating to be kicked out of an app because my clumsy finger has slid over the virtual 'home' button. How Google think this serves game developers on their platform escapes me.

  10. NightFox

    How much for my Nokia 3310?

  11. petur

    Some nokia's do well on ebay

    Try buying an N950, for example.... and soon the N900 will be bloody expensive too :/

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I rather wish I'd kept my:

    Phillips Savvy (C12 I think)

    Siemens C35

    Nokia 3310

    Sendo M500

    Samsung D600

    Motorola RAZR

    iPhone 2G

    iPhone 4

    Crikey, I'd be booting Branson out of Necker Island by now.

  13. Haku

    £9,999 mobile phone battery

    I've often seen absurd prices for widely available items on eBay. When you look at the revision history and/or sales you'll see that the seller purposely put the price stupidly high, I believe this is because the seller temporarily ran out of immediate stock and didn't want to abandon the listing so priced it too high for anyone with any sense to buy it. Then when new stock arrives they set the price back to normal, a process that's significantly easier cancelling & relisting the item.

    But that doesn't explain why the £9,999 battery started out at that price...

    1. Aebleskiver

      Re: £9,999 mobile phone battery

      You're right about the price changes. I sell a lot of eBay stuff myself, and upping the price like this is a common technique to save money (due to relisting fees) and also save time, as you said.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: £9,999 mobile phone battery

        >You're right about the price changes. I sell a lot of eBay stuff myself, and upping the price like this is a common technique to save money

        Has a dodgy side effect on Basket users - in an effort to limit tat build-up, over the past few years I've trained myself to use this and review purchases the following day.

        If the vendor ups the price in the interim, that's reflected when you purchase, rather than a BIN price it went in your basket at......I almost paid £9999.99 for a camera cable because of this..

  14. Steve Todd

    Hamill reaching for the bottom of the barrel?

    Hot new, collectors will pay a premium for rare old stuff! This isn't an Apple only thing, just look at the number of TV shows covering people buying/selling/auctioning antiques. The numbers made aren't all that important, it's the numbers left (and still working) that make a difference. Smaller, display-able stuff sells better also (collectors of steam engines tend to be limited by space for example). Put that lot together and, surprise surprise, the original iPhone is starting to be collected. The price has nothing to do with collectors thinking that the device is better than the current model, just more rare and harder to get.

  15. NB

    Fucking hipsters

    Seriously... Fucking hipsters.

    1. Haku
      Devil

      Re: Fucking hipsters

      LETS KILL HIPSTERS!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fucking hipsters

        Aren't "hipsters" a style of pants, popular in the early 70s?

        1. jake Silver badge

          @AC23:25 (was:Re: Fucking hipsters)

          Why, yes. Hipsters are pants. IMO, anyway.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sigmund

    "If you're looking for Siri, I suggest you get the iPhone 5."

    Honest to goodness, when I read that line my brain replaced the word 'Siri' with another four letter word beginning with 'S'. I did a double take.

  17. PaulR79
    Stop

    NO NO NO!

    "with 8gb of memory"

    8GB of STORAGE! Memory = RAM, RAM is not storage, the two are not to be used as interchangeable words. I expect better on a tech site. *sigh* I'm fighting a losing battle...

    1. stratofish

      Re: NO NO NO!

      "8GB of STORAGE! Memory = RAM, RAM is not storage,"

      While it is correct that they should have said 8GB of storage, RAM is still storage. It is just faster, more expensive and volatile.

      1. PaulR79

        Re: NO NO NO!

        You know I almost said RAM is technically storage but volatile and shouldn't be thought of that way...

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just because they are asking that price does not mean it will sell?

  19. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Looks at £5 given for last samsung phone

    Now I am definatly jealous of ifad users, only because everything I buy is worth nothing.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Looks at £5 given for last samsung phone

      Nah, you just bought the wrong alternatives to Apple devices... look at the eBay prices for an iRiver H320 (an iPod competitor, used the same battery and HDD but with a colour screen and line-in recording). : D

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