“If you’re looking to trade in your ‘old’ iPhone for cash, there’s no better time than right now,” Julianne Pepitone reports for CNNMoney.
“Rumors are rampant that Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) will announce the iPhone 5 on September 12, with a release date soon after that. But if you want to offset the cost of your new phone by scoring the highest value possible for your old one, trade-in experts say you’ll need to lock in your trade now — before everyone else gets the same idea,” Pepitone reports. “‘We always get a rush of people who wait to get a quote until they have the new [iPhone] in their hands,’ said Jeff Trachsel, the chief marketing officer for trade-in service NextWorth. ‘But as the volume increases, the value of your phone declines.'”
Pepitone reports, “Smart traders play arbitrage: Lock in a price now, then wait until you have the new phone in hand to actually send in your old model. Old iPhones hold their value remarkably well. At NextWorth, a 16 GB iPhone 4S in good condition currently fetches $274. Rival site Gazelle is offering $277 for an AT&T phone or $260 for a Verizon or Sprint device. Go one model older, to the iPhone 4, and you can fetch $175 at NextWorth for an AT&T phone or $162 for a Verizon phone. Gazelle will pay $160 to $165.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: At Gazelle, settlers can get around $200 for a Samsung Galaxy S III in “good” condition. Now is the time for them to get prepare to get the iPhone they always wanted!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
I’m waiting for my sim card adapter in the mail so I can sell mine. Dont wanna lose my grandfather in data plan. It’s about exstinked anyhow. But wanna keep ahold of it awhile longer.
The new iPhone will have LTE services and I’m pretty sure the unlimited data will not transfer to LTE
My iPad unlimited data plan was grandfathered in when it made the switch to LTE… I would assume the same would be true for the iPhone.
yea we’ll see. I’ve been wanting to switch to Verizon anyhow and that would the perfect time. I’m with AT&T only for the unlimited. When that’s gone so is AT&T.
How do you lock in your price now and not send the item for a month? Also, I’ve always gotten more for my iPhones on eBay than the sites mentioned above. Then again, I’ve always sold them unlocked. Some eBay buyers are willing to pay a premium to not have to deal with the unlocking procedure.
It’s anecdotal, but on the last cycle of upgrades the people who sold on Craigslist did better than these used buyers who are playing the same game the book buyers did in college.
I completely agree. Evidence isn’t just anecdotal. Go to eBay (or CraigsList) and you’ll see iPhone 4S going for over $400, and 4 for over $300. If the device is listed as new, no scratches or blemishes, they fetch even higher.
You pay a heavy premium on the convenience of not having to put an advertisement on eBay yourself and not having to go through the hassle of preparing the package for shipping. ‘Gazelle”, “SmartTrade” and similar sites will do all that work for you, but will pay you a lot less.
As for a Samsung Android device, they hardly ever fetch much on the second-hand market…
MDN, you need to get prepare to edit your take.