iPhone 6 eBay Auctions Reach Mega-Premium Price Craze

Consumer Electronics

Published: September 12, 2014 12:45 pm

Last Updated: September 12, 2014 2:34 pm

After this week’s unveiling of the coming iPhone 6, Tim Cook and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) are almost assured to have a mega-hit on their hands. In fact, the larger format 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus may even cannibalize iPad sales — and that is being cheered by investors because of the much higher iPhone margins. With orders now being taken, and with those orders already being spoken for (and now pushed further out), 24/7 Wall St. had to wonder what the off-market iPhone 6 units were being sold for on eBay and other destinations.

A look over eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has many iterations of iPhone 6 offerings for sale in auctions and in the Buy It Now feature. To say that people have a tendency to go a little crazy when they’re excited about Apple products might be an understatement. The term fanboys wasn’t created by accident, and some might think it should be “fanaticboys” now.

There are many people out there who are willing and ready to take advantage of the craze and the hype around Apple’s iPhone 6. In fact, filtering the eBay results from $100 to $2,000 left more than 1,200 smartphones and cell phones — not including more than 200 already sold with price tags close to $1,000 and well above.

UPDATE 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time: Fresh reports have been out that iPhone pre-orders have been taken in full at the major carriers. Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T are all looking weeks out. Carrier website “order now” commentary was as follows:

T-Mobile – This product will be available for shipment soon. Order now.
AT&T – Your Apple iPhone 6 Plus (128GB Silver) has been reserved and will ship within 35 – 42 business days. Your shipment may be subject to delays for reasons such as product availability, inventory, credit issues, number porting or carrier delays, etc.
Verizon – Deliver By: 10/07/2014 for most iPhone 6 models

Before just looking over the $1,000 and higher iPhone 6 iterations on eBay auctions, there are four Apple-related domain names that are priced together at $1.623 million — supposedly from a business listed in Yemen.

One of the more prominent things that you will see while browsing the iPhone 6 sales on eBay is that people are selling off their preorders and selling their spots in line ahead of the release date.

So, how much are people willing to pay for an iPhone 6? The range on the offers varies on the product features, such as the screen size and memory. Most iPhone 6 models that we have seen fall within the range of $850 to of $1,500.

We would warn buyers who are blindly buying off of eBay that verifying any such order as legitimate may be very difficult to do. What if the order that was promised to the seller simply doesn’t arrive? Needless to say, there are risks in chasing the iPhone 6 that are above and beyond those of buying other Apple products online that have already been released.

Another warning is that on the Apple online store website, preorders must select a carrier with a contract (even T-Mobile), which pushes up the price by at least $200. One surprising trend on eBay is that many of the offers suggest that the phone will be “factory unlocked,” meaning that buyers will be free to choose their carrier. This is actually the opposite of what Apple says, and Apple forums would say that this option is not available in the United States.

One last warning is that buying on eBay today does not imply that you will get an iPhone right away, nor even next week. Most carriers are talking about ship dates in October.

There has been no mention of the Apple Watch on eBay, but there are some cheap imitators in the form of iPod Nanos.

To say that Steve Jobs might be proud now would be an obvious statement. The only difference here is that Steve Jobs might have been able to wrangle some of the auction premiums out of eBay. We have included some images below showing the actual iPhone 6 regular eBay auctions and Buy It Now formats included.