With the new iPhone 7 Plus sold out worldwide, some owners are turning a pretty profit on Craigslist and eBay.
There’s a brisk trade in brand new iPhone 7 devices, especially the Plus models in jet black, with many selling for almost twice their retail value.
This premium jet black 256GB iPhone 7 Plus, for example, just sold for $1,775 on eBay, with 29 bids. That’s $806 above retail.
Photo: eBay
The iPhone 7 is a hot-ticket item. Apple announced that the iPhone 7 Plus is sold out globally, and there are no stocks in stores anywhere. Carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T are reporting record sales, with 400 percent more demand than the iPhone 6s last year.
Only customers who preordered the phone will get one anytime in the foreseeable future. Shipping times have slipped into October since the first batch of phones sold out in minutes when preorders started last week.
eBay listings for the sellout iPhone popped up almost immediately after preorders started. About 2,000 active iPhone 7 sales, and 1,449 sold listings, can be seen currently on the auction site.
Most of the eBay iPhones are selling for several hundred dollars above retail prices, and most are attracting dozens of bidders. Many of the completed listings are almost double the list price. One 128GB iPhone 7 Plus in jet black sold for $1,250 after nine bids (it costs $869 from Apple).
Several of the iPhones are being sold before the seller even gets them. For example, this Craigslist seller is trying to offload his iPhone 7 for $1,500 — about $500 over the list price — with the seller promising to dispatch it as soon as he picks it up Saturday.
“Will have the phone in hand ASAP,” the seller promises in the listing.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
4 responses to “Jet black iPhone 7 Plus is a hot item on eBay”
I cannot understand paying hundreds so you don’t have to wait a month – especially when there isn’t THAT much difference from the 6s. I walked into my AT&T store here in DFW and picked up an iPhone 7 black 256GB at 10:15 AM this morning. They had stock of others as well. Only the 7 plus was out of stock.
People with disposable income must be the dumbest people.
They are smarter than you that’s why they have more.
Literally. My iPhone is hot AF on iOS 10