I am usually not the first to jump on new technology, and smart phones are no different. I am not a die hard Apple guy, so when I was ready, I made the plunge and got new Droids for both my wife and I. In retrospect, I could not have been less happy with this decision. My wife’s phone worked for her, but mine was just horrible. I ended up getting a replacement phone from the store, but that one seen went to pot as well, with me having to reboot it by pulling the battery out of it because it would lock up.
One evening I decided I had enough of the phone and my wife’s had started to give her a hard time. I went to my local Verizon store and was pleasantly surprised when I was allowed to upgrade to the iPhone for both my wife and I. We spend a fair amount of money every month, so that might have something to do with it. And here is where the story gets good. The upgrade price was not enough to cover the cost of the iPhone, but the tech told me that I could probably got $300 each for the phones on eBay. I had no idea that this underground phone market existed but it did. I got close to $300 for each phone, so I was pretty happy.
The moral of the story is that you may not realize that you are sitting on a gold mine if you have old phones laying around. I encourage you to check out ebay to see what similar models are selling for.
In the UK, used phones are such a hot market that there is a website that specializes in helping sell mobile phones (SellMyMobile.com.)
If you have a phone that turns out to not be worth any money, I also recommend checking with organization that let you donate phones such as:
- https://cellphonesforsoldiers.com/ (For Soldiers)
- https://www.ncadv.org/takeaction/DonateaPhone.php (For Victims of Domestic Violence)
You should be able to at least get a tax write off if you donate to a register non profit organization.
(Disclosure: This is a sponsored blog post)