Most Expensive iPhone Ever: Original 4GB iPhone Fetches $190,000 at Auction

A sealed, new-in-box original iPhone has just fetched a record price of $190,000 at auction — nearly double what it was initially expected to sell for.

Last month, news surfaced of a factory-sealed 4GB 2007 iPhone going up on the auction block at LCG Auctions. At the time, the iPhone was expected to fetch as much as $100,000 — an impressive number that would have been nearly twice as much as any other first-generation iPhone has ever sold for in similar condition.

For example, an auction in February saw a first-generation sealed iPhone go for $63,356 — the former record price — while at an April auction, another model went for $40,320, likely fetching a bit less due to a small hole in the plastic wrapping that meant it technically wasn’t in mint condition.

However, both those iPhones were 8GB models, which were far more widely available. This latest auction was for the extremely rare 4GB version that was on the market for a limited time. The auction house expected this would drive bids even higher, but the results greatly exceeded their expectations.

Sixteen years ago, the original iPhone was launched in 4GB and 8GB versions, but only the 8GB one survived beyond the first two months. The 4GB model ended up being unpopular enough that Apple took it off the market only 68 days later, reducing it from its original $499 selling price to $299 just to clear out whatever stock remained. As LCG Auctions describes it in the listing:

The original 4GB model is considered a “Holy Grail” amongst iPhone collectors. Its extreme scarcity is directly related to its limited production. Debuting on June 29th, 2007, alongside the 8GB model, the 4GB model was hampered by slow sales. Buyers chose to pay the $100 upcharge in exchange for double the storage space. The lagging sales resulted in Apple making the decision to discontinue the 4GB model on September 5th, 2007, just over two months after it was first released.

Meanwhile, Apple dropped the 8GB iPhone to $399 — $100 less than the 4GB model initially sold for, marking one of the largest — and fastest — price adjustments in the company’s history.

It’s unclear how many units of the 4GB iPhone Apple produced, but it was likely only a few hundred thousand. Apple only sold 270,000 iPhones on its initial launch weekend, and it took until September before it sold the one-millionth iPhone — an announcement that came five days after it discontinued the 4GB model and significantly dropped the price of the 8GB version.

Of course, most people who bought iPhones 16 years ago took them out of the box and used them, and it’s even more likely this would be the case for somebody who purchased the less expensive 4GB model. So, a sealed, new-in-box 4GB 2007 iPhone certainly would be a rare commodity.

By comparison, the 8GB iPhone remained on the market for two weeks shy of a year, being officially discontinued by Apple with the release of the iPhone 3G on June 15, 2008. Apple released a 16GB version in February, but that was discontinued alongside the 8GB version, effectively lasting only four months.

We haven’t yet seen any 16GB models of the original iPhone up for auction, so we’re not sure how rare these would be. Still, they’re likely less so than the 4GB model, particularly since by that time, the iPhone had expanded beyond US borders to the UK, Germany, and France in November 2007, and then Austria and Ireland in March 2008, meaning the 16GB model would have been sold in a much larger market.

Bidding on the rare 4GB iPhone started at $10,000 on June 30 and only rose to $42,000 until the final hours, when bidding suddenly jumped to the final selling price of $190,372.80.