There’s nothing like an iPhone launch to bring out the crazy in the Apple faithful.
Preorders for the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus went live this morning – and the secondary market is already making a killing off of the phones. Unlocked units are fetching a premium price on eBay, with one buyer paying $1,989 for an unlocked 256GB iPhone 8 Plus model. That’s more than twice what Apple is charging—and notably more than the high-end iPhone X will cost.
The excitement in the online auction world is for the factory unlocked versions of the phone. While those can still be bought at their retail prices (which range from $699 to $949) at the Apple store, inventory shortages have pushed back delivery dates to as late as Oct. 6. (There’s no wait for carrier-specific models as of 9 am Friday morning.)
A look at the sold listings filter on eBay shows plenty of people are willing to pay extra to get the unlocked phones on Day One. One seller had managed to sell four iPhone 8s in the early morning hours, for a grand total of $6,196 (his asking price for a 256GB iPhone 8 Plus was $1,599).
All totaled, eBay showed more than a dozen people willing to spent over $1,000 for that model. And some particularly avaricious sellers are listing the item at $3,000 or higher. (We’ll just ignore the guy who’s asking $60,000.)
This is, of course, not a new phenomenon. Whenever hot new tech items go on sale, eBay is instantly full of resellers making a quick profit. Once iPhone 8 mania has slowed down a bit, sellers will go into a bit of a lull until the Sept. 29 launch of the SNES Classic Edition from Nintendo – and then they’ll anxiously await the launch of the iPhone X, which may fetch the highest resale prices of any iPhone model.