With the new iPhone 3G S now available, some of you will most likely decide to upgrade their old iPhone 2G or 3G to get the “fastest iPhone yet”. Depending on your upgrade eligibility with AT&T, you might be able to get the best price on the new iPhone ($299 for the 32GB), or if you’re not eligible, the 32GB will cost you up to $699.
A good way to offset the price of the new iPhone 3G S is to sell your old iPhone. there are a few sites out there that “specialize” is buying out old iPhones but I recommend staying away from them. while they may be completely legit sites, they won’t give you as much as you could get if you sold your iPhone directly to a third party. The following is what I did to sell my last 2 iPhones and believe me, it worked very well…
Take Good Care of your iPhone
Needless to say that a clean, scratch-free iPhone will increase the resell value. I take good care of my stuff and even though I never put my iPhones in a case, both my old iPhones were in extremely good condition. This, plus the fact that I had the box and the original accessories really increased the resell value.
Unlock your iPhone
The first thing you want to do when reselling an iPhone is to unlock it. Unlocking your iPhone will allow you to appeal to a larger audience. there are many people on T-Mobile that are dying to get an iPhone. In my case, offering an unlocked iPhone was the key to finding buyers at the best price possible.
You can easily unlock the iPhone 2G, but if you updated to 3.0, you won’t be able to unlock your iPhone 3G until UltraSn0w comes out, sometimes soon. Personally, I hadn’t updated my iPhone 3G to 3.0 when it came out because I knew there wouldn’t be an unlock right away. I sold my iPhone 3G with the 2.2 firmware, unlocked with YellowSn0w.
eBay or Craigslist?
Now the most important part of the resell is to list your iPhone on the right sites. you basically have 2 options. first is eBay. What’s great with eBay is that you can reach foreign customers and some people in Europe are really willing to pay a good price for an iPhone. The downside of eBay is that you’re not sure how much money you will get, and you will have to deal with shipping and all that stuff. I don’t like eBay but it seems to be working well for many iPhone resellers.
My website of choice to resell my iPhones (and pretty much anything I have to sell) is CraigsList.org. I sold both my iPhones on Craigslist in a couple of days. What’s great about Craigslist is that you can reach local people, and it is free to list your item for sale.
To increase your chances of selling your iPhone for a good price on Craigslist, make sure you say your iPhone is unlocked in the title of the post. Also add a picture and list any accessories you will give with the iPhone, if any.
How It Worked out For me
When the iPhone 3G came out last year, I sold my iPhone 2G to a Spanish guy who was vacationing in the States. At the time, the iPhone was pretty expensive in Europe. I sold my unlocked 2G for $400, which allowed me to get the 3G and still make a profit of $100.
Last Friday, I sold my iPhone 3G to a woman who was just about to go visit her family in Israel. She needed an iPhone for her nephew. I had listed my 3G at $400 but I sold it to her for $350. I gave her $50 off because she also bought an iPod and an old digital camera from me. That was a pretty good deal for me… Total sale was $570, which is just what I paid for my new iPhone 3G S.