A factory sealed, first-generation iPhone has been sold for more than $63,000 at auction, costing more than 100 times its original price.
Karen Green, the original owner of the device, was gifted this phone by her friends when she got a management job in 2007. But she already had three phone lines with Verizon (a US telecom company), and iPhones at the time could only use AT&T (another US telecom company).
Instead of paying unnecessary termination fees and risk losing her phone number, Green never opened the phone and remained using the one she has back then.
More than 15 years later, she contacted LCG Auctions when she heard that another first-generation iPhone was sold for more than $39,000 at an auction.
27 people bid for the phone, with the first bid starting at $2,500. It had been expected to sell for $50,000 but it was ultimately sold for $63,000.
The first-generation iPhone could hold up to 4GB of memory for $499 or 8GB for $599. It had a 3.5-inch screen and a 2-megapixel camera, but it did not support any third-party apps, unlike today’s devices which can hold thousands.
