A brand new and boxed iPhone 1 dubbed the “Holy Grail” has set a new auction record and smashed the previous record.
If Steve Jobs had noticed that: A brand new and never unpacked iPhone 1 with 4 GB has come under the hammer at the auction house LCG Auctions – and sets a new record.
New record thanks to meager 4 GB
Like in the Description of the auction can be read, the auctions for the iPhone 1, which was presented by Steve Jobs in January 2007 and sold at the end of June 2007 for originally 499 / 599 (4 / 8 GB) US dollars, have already reached several record levels. It was $40,000 last October and almost $64,000 in February 2023 (PCGH reported). However, the smaller 4 GB version is the “Holy Grail” among iPhone collectors because it was produced in comparatively small numbers and sold poorly after launch. It was discontinued as early as September 2007, just over two months after it was first published. This creates fantasies among collectors.
When the auction was presented, LCG Auctions already assumed that 50,000 to 100,000 US dollars would be possible at the auction. With 190,372 US dollars (actually 158,644, but there are also various fees), significantly more was achieved – the starting bid was 10,000 US dollars, there were 28 bids in all. Among other things, the auctioneer promises that the iPhone is brand new and has never been activated. The vendor was part of Apple’s original engineering team when the iPhone first came out. Collectors and investors “will have a hard time finding a better copy”. You will probably never know whether the iPhone still works, because it (of course) loses its value. It was only in April that we reported on the “late Roman decadence” when a Youtuber bought an iPhone 1 in its original packaging for US$40,000 and then unpacked it.
The iPhone 1 had an innovative touchscreen, an ARM 11 CPU with 412 MHz and a screen with 320 x 480 pixels. After all, there was WLAN in the b and g standard, but no GPS and Bluetooth. The 2 megapixel camera makes modern selfie retro filters unnecessary.
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