Old iPhone still fetch a good 2nd resale value

In case if you are not aware, the old iPhone still fetch a decent price. Check out the flyer above and you will see that they are opportunists out there who will pay $199 for a 8GB version and $299 for 16Gb version. You can check out the details of their offers at FreeiPhoneSwap.com.

Its pretty obvious that they are buying up the old iPhones to feed the gray market. There is a high demand for the original iPhones that don’t require an operator's contract to activate. Techniques for unlocking the original phones for use overseas are already well established, while those for the 3G phones are still under development.

And in the United States, Apple and AT&T have made it harder to buy a 3G phone which the user must sign a contract with AT&T, making those phones harder to export or peddle on the gray market. If you don’t care about or can’t take advantage of faster network speeds, or you don’t want a contract, or you live in China like me, where there are still no authorized iPhone dealers, the original phone will still be the best option.