An original and still unopened first-generation iPhone is going for auction, as the owner expects to fetch at least $50,000. According to Business Insider, Karen Green wants to sell the iPhone she got as a present from her friends in 2007.
Since, at the time, she was a Verizon user, and the first-generation iPhone required an AT&T account, she decided to keep the smartphone in a sealed box and put it on a self “wrapped in a pair of felt pajamas for extra storage.”
The only reason she decided to sell the first-generation iPhone, which features a 3.5-inch screen, a 2-megapixel camera, and up to 8GB of storage, is because she wants to use this money in her tattoo studio.
To the publication, she said she thought about selling the unopened first-generation iPhone several times, but since prices continued to increase, she decided to wait a bit more.
“It took me almost a year to get it up and running, and when you don’t have an income for a year because you don’t have a place to work and you’re trying to get out on your own, your resources start to go,” she said. “If I could hold off on the phone for like another 10 years, I probably would,” she says. “The only reason why I am selling that phone is because I need to support this business.”
People can participate in the action by bidding via the LCG Auctions website. The starting bid is $2,500, but the phone is estimated to fetch $50,000 or more based on the last auction’s sale price, which got $40,000 and widespread media coverage.
With the first-iPhone now worth more than 80 times its original price, we wonder how many unopened models still exist.
