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Now is the best time to sell your old iPhone

Joanna Faith
Written By:
Joanna Faith
Posted:
Updated:
05/09/2018

Do you have an old iPhone lying around? Now is the best time to sell it, according to analysis.

The iPhone Price Tracking Study from mobile phone comparison site Compare and Recycle shows late August is the best time to trade in your old iPhone to get the most money.

It said trade-in prices ramp up ahead of the launch of the new iPhone, which is rumoured to be on 12 September this year.

After this, there’s a big dip in what you can earn as new models come to market.

As an example, when the iPhone 8 and Plus were announced and released, here’s what happened to the price of the older iPhone 7 model (average of all models):

  • Announcement day: drops by £4 compared with before the announcement
  • Day after announcement: drops by £13.50 compared with before the announcement
  • Day of new iPhone release: drops by £22.80 compared with before the announcement
  • End of the month (after most people have received their new iPhone): drops by £41.30 compared with before the announcement.

Matthew Moreton, managing director of Compare and Recycle, said: “Speculation runs rife every year about the best time to sell your iPhone but our report conclusively shows that late August is when you stand to make the most money.

“Make sure you don’t miss out on this window of opportunity.”

Moreton added his prediction for recycling prices for this year’s iPhone launch: “The drop will be higher than previous years by the introduction of the new budget iPhone because it will be in higher demand and people will find the gap between resale price and retail price more appealing, providing a higher supply to the recyclers and lowering the recycling offer prices even further.”

If you have a 64GB iPhone 6 Plus you can make £210 on average and high capacity iPhone SE, which originally came out as long ago as March 2016, could earn you as much as £200.