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Tips for selling old iphones

Sho'Nuff

Sho'Nuff

Diamond Member
So my wife and I both upgraded to the 5s, and now I have a couple of old iphones to sell. both are locked to verizon. One is a 16GB black 5 (good shape, but for a couple small dings), and the other is a 3s (immaculate shape - wife is neurotic).

I'm not offering the phones for sale here. Rather, I'm looking for tips as to where the best place to sell them is, and what if anything I should do before I sell them. I'm trying to avoid craigslist and I've already erased and reset both phones.

Some questions:

1) Should I remove the sim cards from the old phones?

2) Any reputable sites out there that will buy phones? I googled and found a bunch of them, but they all look shady? Anyone have any good experiences they would be willing to share?
 
Yes, remove the SIM card and wipe your phone to bring it back to factory state. Gazelle.com will buy your old phones but at a much lower price then what you can get on Craigslist.

My tip: make sure that your phone is unlocked from your carrier. Even if your contract is expired, the carrier lock might still be on the phone. For AT&T, you can do it through a webpage.
 
craigslist you get the most $$$ for lack of effort I believe, just sold my Verizon black iP5 in a few days. I always make them drive to me and meet at a local McDonalds or the like.

If you decide not to you will probably lose out on a good $100.

"Flawless" gazelle offer was only $260. I got $370.

The phone is definitely already unlocked, because the guy that bought mine popped in his AT&T sim card and was off and running.
 
You might want to double check the other phone. There never was a 3s, there was a 3GS, but that was never on Verizon. The first iPhone that Verizon got was the 4.

Other than that, I'll echo what others have said. Gazelle, swappa, whatever are all reputable sites, but you'll get less money for them. It's a $ vs convenience thing, just like everything else. I know that gazelle will send you a pre-paid box and label, so you just drop the device in at your leisure and ship it to them. Very easy. But you'll get more money from craigslist if that matters more to you.
 
How do you get less money from Swappa? You get whatever people looking to buy a phone are willing to pay. It is nothing like Gazelle.

It probably depends on where you live, but you'll get squat trying to sell electronics of any type on CL around here. Lots of crack and meth heads selling stuff dirt cheap tends to drop the average price a bit.
 
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I'll echo swappa. Fantastic experience with them.
And your iPhone 5 isn't locked to Verizon. It would be usable in both AT&T and TMobile, just won't get LTE on it.

But I managed to sell my iPhone 5 on swappa about a month ago for $445. Probably could get $400 now. Craigslist is really dependent on your area to get any kind of good money for your device.
 
TheStu said:
You might want to double check the other phone. There never was a 3s, there was a 3GS, but that was never on Verizon. The first iPhone that Verizon got was the 4.

Other than that, I'll echo what others have said. Gazelle, swappa, whatever are all reputable sites, but you'll get less money for them. It's a $ vs convenience thing, just like everything else. I know that gazelle will send you a pre-paid box and label, so you just drop the device in at your leisure and ship it to them. Very easy. But you'll get more money from craigslist if that matters more to you.
Click to expand...

Doh! My bad. My wife's phone was a 4s, not 3s.

Looks like craigslist is the way to go for these. Thanks for the tips.
 
I would use CL or Swappa myself. Depending on what the 5 is going for overseas...maybe Ebay. But I will only deal with certain countries that arent the US.
 
I've been using amazon trade in.. I've been too worried about getting scammed from ebay or craigslist. There have been news stories in this area about people being robbed from selling their phones on craigslist so I've been OK with the lower amazon valuation.
 
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