The old mobile phones lying unused in your drawer could be worth far more than expected, according to new research. Insurance firm Protect Your Bubble compared the average eBay selling price of dozens of popular retro phones and found a clear winner when it comes to the most profitable.
The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X leads the way with an average sale price of £1,776.01. One of the first available commercial mobile phones, the model was first released in 1984 and the highly-collectable phone was sold a total of 12 times in the year from May 2021-May 2022 on eBay.
The second most profitable phone over the same period was the HTC Touch Diamond2 or ‘HTC Topaz’, of which only one was sold for £542.90. That was a whopping £528.94 more than its predecessor the HTC Touch Diamond, which was sold for just £13.42.
In third place was the iPhone 1st Generation, with an average selling price of £542.55. Perhaps one of the most well-known phone models, the original iPhone was sold just 61 times last year on eBay.
While rarity contributed to the inflated price of some of the most profitable phones, the good news for those who have been hoarding old models for years is that several familiar names were on the top grossing list. The Nokia 6310i led the way with a whopping £68,517 grossed in 12 months. Released in 2002, this retro phone had an average selling price of £47.45, meaning 1,444 were sold.
The second top grossing phone was the Nokia 2100 and 15 of the top 20 were Nokia models. The third top-grossing phone was the BlackBerry Bold with £37,903 – perhaps boosted by nostalgic purchases after the company’s legacy software was decommissioned in January.
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