The unopened, boxed 2007 iPhone is being offered by auction block LGC Auctions , which is expected to top $30,000.
A 2007 iPhone , still in its box, is being auctioned online and is expected to fetch well above its retail price.
This phone cost $599 when it was first released, which means it will be auctioned for 50 times its original price.
A high cost auction
The first-generation iPhone is currently on the LCG Auctions auction block, with the auction house that lists it estimating that it could even exceed $30,000.
“This factory sealed first release example is in exceptional condition,” the item description says . “Collectors and investors would be hard-pressed to find a superior example. Relevance and rarity comprise a winning formula for this red-hot collectible.”
The unused 8GB iPhone is still unopened in its original box. The computer came with a 3.5-inch screen, a 2-megapixel camera, and a web browser. When the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs first introduced it 15 years ago, he called it a combination of “an iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator.”
There have been 16 offers on the phone so far, starting at $2,500. The highest bid as of this writing is $10,446. The auction will still end in several hours.
15 years later
On January 9, 2007, Apple leader Steve Jobs made an announcement that would forever change the industry: the first iPhone .
Jobs, who led the launch of the most important products in the industry, and who solidified Apple as one of the most profitable companies in the world, “reinvented” the concept of mobile on that day.
“Well, today we are going to present three revolutionary products. The first is an iPod with a screen and touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile. And the third is an innovative Internet communication device. An iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone… get it? They are not three separate devices, we call this device iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is,” Jobs said as he introduced it.
The first iPhone had features that sound very small today, but were very big for its time: it had a capacitive touch screen, speaker and earpiece, microphone, 2 megapixel camera, headphone jack, EDGE connectivity and Wi-Fi. Furthermore, it had a single-core processor, 128MB RAM, and a maximum internal storage capacity of 16GB.