The Most Profitable & In-demand Retro Phones on eBay

Mobile phones have been around for almost 40 years, with new models and new manufacturers appearing each year. At Protect Your Bubble we wanted to find out which retro phone could make you the most profit when sold on eBay. How many of these retro phones do you have lying around?

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The Most Profitable Retro Phones on eBay

1.MOTOROLA DYNATAC 8000X, average selling price: £1,776.01. 2. HTC TOUCH DIAMOND2, average selling price:£542.90. 3. IPHONE 3G, £307.68 4.MOTOROLA RAZR2, average selling price: £239.25 5. MOTOROLA MICROTAC 9800X, average selling price: £230.36 6.MOTOROLA INTERNATIONAL 3200, average selling price: £215.60 7. NOKIA 7280, average selling price: £180.44. 8.NOKIA N79, average selling price: £171.62. 9. ERICSSON T39, average selling price: £146.85. 10.NOKIA E90 COMMUNICATOR, average selling price: £134.25. 11.NOKIA N-GAGE, average selling price: £112.90. 12.NOKIA 9000 COMMUNICATOR, average selling price: £112.52. 13.HTC UNIVERSAL, average selling price: £104.25. 14.NOKIA 91101, average selling price: £100.75. 15.MOTOROLA RAZR2 V9, average selling price: £93.44. 16.NOKIA 7600, average selling price: £86.89. 17.NOKIA 2100, average selling price: £66.74. 18.SIDEKICK LX 2009, average selling price: £57.09 19.NOKIA 8110, average selling price: £56.70.

At the top of our table, we have the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. You can’t get a more retro phone than the first commercially available mobile. With an average selling price of £1,776.01 and a total of 12 sold in the last year on eBay, this phone is truly one for collectors.

The second most profitable phone is the HTC Touch Diamond2 or ‘HTC Topaz’, of which only one was sold in the last 12 months for £542.90. This is £528.94 more than its predecessor the HTC Touch Diamond, which was sold for just £13.42. 

Our third most profitable phone 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. 

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The Top Grossing Retro Phones

1.NOKIA 6310i, grossed: £68,517. 2. NOKIA 2100, grossed: £39,777. 3. BLACKBERRY BOLD grossed: £37,903. 4. NOKIA N95, grossed: £36,834. 5. NOKIA 8110, grossed: £3,470. 6. IPHONE, grossed:£33,095. 7. NOKIA 8210, grossed: £25,305. 8. MOTOROLA DYNATAC 8000X, grossed: £21,312. 9. NOKIA N-GAGE, grossed: £15,241. 10. MOTOROLA RAZR2, grossed: £15,073. 11. NOKIA E90 COMMUNICATOR, grossed: £8,995. 12. NOKIA E71, grossed: £7,944. 13. NOKIA 7110, grossed: £7,859. 14. NOKIA 6600, grossed: £7,484. 15. NOKIA 6100, grossed: £7,316. 16. NOKIA 6630, grossed:£6,827. 17. NOKIA 3220, grossed: £5,788. 18. BLACKBERRY PEARL, grossed: £5,620 19.NOKIA N97, grossed: £5,390. 20. NOKIA 7600, grossed: £4,953.

Our top grossing retro phone was the Nokia 6310i with a whopping £68,517 grossed in the last 12 months. Released in 2002, this retro phone had an average selling price of £47.45, meaning 1,444 were sold in the last 12 months, the second most of all our phones researched.  

Our second top grossing phone is the Nokia 2100. In fact, 15 of our top 20 grossed were all Nokia phones. The Nokia 2100 grossed £39,777 over the last 12 months. Our third top-grossing phone was the BlackBerry Bold with £37,903 grossed over the last 12 months. This year, in January, BlackBerry’s legacy software was decommissioned, possibly spurring more nostalgic purchases. 

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The Most In-Demand Retro Phones

1. NOKIA 6630, 1,614 sales. 2. NOKIA 63101, 1,444 sales. 3. BLACKBERRY BOLD, 1,417 sales. 4. NOKIA 8210, 1,106 sales. 5. NOKIA 6100, 994 sales. 6. NOKIA N95, 950 sales. 7. NOKIA 6680, 882 sales. 8. NOKIA 8110, 612 sales. 9. NOKIA 2100, 596 sales. 10. NOKIA E71, 358 sales. 11. NOKIA 7610, 278 sales. 12. BLACKBERRY PEARL, 252 sales. 13. NOKIA 3310, 237 sales. 14. NOKIA 6600, 229 sales. 15. NOKIA 3220, 215 sales. 16. NOKIA 5800 XPRESSMUSIC, 192 sales. 17. NOKIA 7110, 175 sales. 18. NOKIA N97, 140 sales. 19. NOKIA N-GAGE, 135 sales. 20. MOTOROLA STARTAC, 116 sales.

Our most in-demand phone was the Nokia 6630 with 1,614 sold. With an average selling price of £4.23, this phone grossed £6,827 over the last 12 months. Our second most in-demand was the Nokia 2100. 17 of our most in-demand phones are Nokia’s, so clearly there is a lot of demand for old-school Nokias. Our third most in-demand phone is the Blackberry Bold with 1,417 sold in the last 12 months.

There’s a huge market out there for retro phones. Whether that’s a collector looking for the next vintage phone, a user desperate to go get the nostalgic feel of their childhood handset, or even a user looking for simplicity over the latest tech. 

Luckily, we’ve done the market analysis for you, so you know exactly how much you can expect for your retro phone. If you’ve remembered you’ve got an old Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, HTC Touch Diamond2, or the original iPhone collecting dust in a draw, you could be sitting on a small fortune. 

Summary

Protect Your Bubble used a list of all popular retro phones through time as a sample.  

These phones were then input into eBay’s own market research tool, Terapeak, to identify top sold and top grossing phones over the past year.  

* Data collected from May 2021 – May 2022.