Rare Factory-Sealed OG 4GB iPhone Hits the Auction Block, Could Bring as Much as $100,000

A super rare original 4GB 2007 iPhone has been put up for auction, and if previous auctions are any indicator, the iPhone could bring $100,000 or more at auction.

LCG Auctions is currently auctioning the sealed and unopened 4GB 2007 iPhone which opened with a starting bid of $10,000. At the time of this writing, the current bid is $11,000, but with the auction set to end on March 24, there’s plenty of time for that number to go much higher.

The original 4GB iPhone model is rare, as Apple discontinued the 4GB version on September 5, 2007, just a little more than two months after its initial release. LCG Auctions believes that the auction’s final bid will reach over $100,000.

In July 2023, a new-in-box sealed 4GB original 2007 iPhone fetched a record-breaking bid of $190,000 at auction — close to double what the handset was initially expected to sell for.

When it launched on June 29, 2007, the original iPhone was sold in two storage configurations: 4GB and 8GB. The 4GB model sold for $499, while the 8GB version went for $599.

The 8GB iPhone model proved much more popular than the 4GB model, and Apple dropped the smaller capacity version from its lineup after only 68 days on the market. At the same time, the now-standard 8GB iPhone was reduced to $399 — $100 less than what the 4GB iPhone model initially sold for — and the remaining 4GB units were sold for $299.

The 4GB model was eventually replaced with a model featuring a larger 16GB storage capacity, but that didn’t happen until six months later, in February 2008. The 8GB iPhone remained on sale for nearly a year before being officially discontinued by Apple when the iPhone 3G was released on June 15, 2008. The 16GB model was discontinued alongside the 8GB version, after only four months on the market.

The 4GB iPhone’s short availability is what makes it the rarest of the first-generation iPhone models, especially when it is still sealed in the original box.

Apple began developing a smartphone in 2004 when the Cupertino firm began gathering a team of 1,000 employees, led by design officer Jony Ive, software engineer Scott Forstall, and hardware engineer Tony Fadell.

While the original focus was reportedly developing a tablet, then-CEO Steve Jobs steered the focus toward a phone. The device was created with the cooperation of Cingular Wireless (known later as AT&T Mobility) and had an estimated development cost of $150 million. The development timespan lasted more than thirty months.

Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on January 9, 2007, during the Macworld conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The new device sported a 3.5-inch multi-touch screen and only a few hardware buttons, compared to the cell phones of the day, which were all hardware buttons. The original iPhone ran the “iPhone OS” operating system and had a touch-friendly interface. It launched on June 29, 2007.

In other Apple-related auction news, last week a 1976 “Apple Computer Company” check signed by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs went up for auction. The check, dated July 8, 1976, was written to Pacific Telephone to pay Apple’s $201.41 phone bill.

The check is part of an auction being held by RR Auctions, called the “Steve Jobs and the Apple Computer Revolution” collection. The auction will end on March 21, 2024.