By Jennifer Korn | CNN
A first generation iPhone from 2007 sold for over $63,000 at an online auction on Sunday, more than 100 times its original price. Called a “first edition” device by auctioneer LCG Auctions, the box had never been opened.
The original iPhone retailed for $599 and offered early Apple users a 3.5-inch screen with a 2-megapixel camera, plus 4GB and 8GB storage options, internet capabilities, and iTunes. It had no app store, ran on a 2G network, and was exclusive to AT&T’s network.
Bidding on this phone started online earlier this month for $2,500. All told, there were 27 bids, according to LCG’s website, which did not identify the winning bidder nor disclose how many collectors or companies were competing for the item.
LCG Auctions did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Cosmetic tattoo artist Karen Green received the 8GB version as a gift and says she never broke the seal appearance on the daytime television show ‘The Doctor & The Diva’ in 2019. An appraiser from the show valued the phone at $5,000 at the time.
Another unopened first-generation iPhone, like Green’s, sold for more than $39,000 in an offer also by LCG Auctions that closed in October.
The iPhone changed the way billions of people around the world communicate, pay, do their jobs, take pictures and even how they wake up in the morning. It killed dozens of industries (camcorders, mp3 players, flip phones) and brought many more to life.
Speaking at Apple’s annual Macworld expo in 2007, then-Apple boss Steve Jobs opened his presentation with: “We’re going to make history together today.” Jobs called the new smartphone a “revolutionary cell phone” with an iPod, a telephone and what he called an “Internet communicator.”
“It’s bad out there today,” Jobs said of mobile Web browsers. “It’s a real revolution to bring real web browsing to a phone.”
