Lucky Karen sells ‘ancient’ 2007 Apple iPhone for whopping £56,000 at auction

When the Apple was first released in 2007, gadget lovers went into a frenzy over Steve Job's visionary new product.

But they also baulked at the first-gen iPhone's whopping £460 ($559) price tag, which was almost unheard of for mobile phones at the time.

It turns out that it was a very good investment to make for one lucky buyer, who sold her first-generation iPhone for 100x its original value at an auction in the US last week.

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28 people made bids on the factory-sealed gadget, which ultimately went for a whopping £56,250 ($63,356.40) on Sunday.

That's a 10,477 percent markup on a smartphone which has barely any of the features you'd expect from a modern touchscreen device, including 3G connectivity.

LCG Auctions sold it as a 'highly desirable, factory-sealed first-generation original Apple iPhone from 2007.

Karen Green, the seller of the original iPhone, hadn't unwrapped the device packaging or even touched the gadget since buying it all those years ago.

The reason she never used the iPhone was because, although it was a gift from her friends to celebrate her getting a new job, Apple's first smartphone worked exclusively with mobile provider AT&T and Karen was on a contract with another company, Verizon.

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Karen sold her device when she heard about another first-gen iPhone selling for $10,000 on eBay.

She told Insider: "I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, I think I have the original'. I called my son and I was like, 'Go get the phone and make sure it's not opened."

She now hopes to invest the money she's made into her tattoo business. Karen said: "If I could hold off on the phone for like another 10 years, I probably would. The only reason why I am selling that phone is because I need to support this business."

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