Original 2007 4GB iPhone dubbed the 'holy grail' of devices sells for nearly $200,000 at auction
The sale absolutely smashed expectations.
An original, unopened iPhone from 2007 has sold for a truly jaw-dropping price at auction.
When Apple unveils its latest slate of new devices every year, the top of the line usually retails for close to $2,000.
However, there is a box from the past that has sold for much, much more.
The 4GB first-generation iPhone fetched $190,372 when the hammer dropped.
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Just for your information, that's more than 300 times the price of the smartphone when it was released.
People lucky enough to get their mitts on one of these bad boys back in the day would have paid $599.
Yet someone somewhere has decided it's worth a lot more now.
The phone came from a member of Apple's original engineering team when the iPhone launched all those years ago.
The auction price far exceeded expectations as it was forecast to sell for anywhere between $50,000-100,000.
The bidder must have really wanted this piece of technological history.
Because there have been so many incarnations of the iPhone since its first release, the first model has become a real collectors' item.
LCG Auctions founder Mark Montero said in a statement: "Despite the extensive worldwide media exposure our previous sales received and the hundreds of contacts we've had with consumers who thought they had a factory-sealed original iPhone, this is the only 4GB factory-sealed version to surface.
"Based upon our recent record-setting sales and the fact that the 4GB model is probably 20-times rarer than the 8GB version, we are not surprised it established a new record price but surpassing the $190,000 mark was quite surprising."
The auction company called the device a 'Holy Grail' amongst iPhone collectors.
"Its extreme scarcity is directly related to its limited production," the site reads.
The first-generation iPhone came with either 4GB or 8GB for storage, which would seem ludicrous by today's standards, and a 2-megapixel camera.
The latest iPhones offer a casual 1TB of storage on the upper end of the scale and a 48-megapixel camera.
This sale has eclipsed the record set in February this year where an 8GB iPhone from the same era sold for $63,356.40.
Tattoo artist Karen Green was given the phone when it was released, but, coincidentally, she had just got a new phone and decided to keep the gift in case it appreciated.
And boy did it.
While Karen was told back in 2019 that the iPhone would likely be worth $5,000, she said she was overwhelmed when it ultimately sold for more than $60K.
Topics: Apple, Technology, iPhone
Stewart Perrie