When to sell your old phone
The phone in your drawer is not holding its value. What the depreciation curve looks like, and the three moments worth acting on.
Almost every phone we collect has been in a drawer for months. The owner meant to sell it, then it stopped being urgent, and the price it would have fetched quietly fell the whole time. Depreciation on consumer electronics does not pause because the device is switched off.
The shape of the curve
A phone loses value fastest in its first year and keeps losing it after that, in a curve that flattens without ever going flat. The practical consequences:
- The month you replace a phone is close to the best price you will get for it.
- Six months of "I'll get around to it" costs real money.
- A five-year-old phone still has a price, but the difference between selling it today and selling it next year is now small — which is a reason to clear it out, not to keep waiting.
Launches move the whole line
When a manufacturer launches a new flagship, the ceiling of every older model in that line moves down. Your phone did not change; the market around it did. Apple's launches in the second half of the year and Samsung's Galaxy S launches early in the year are the two that move the most, and the effect reaches phones several generations back.
If you know you are upgrading at a launch, selling the old phone in the weeks before it usually beats selling in the weeks after.
Sale season, and the trade-in you did not take
The other pattern worth knowing is the run of big seasonal sales, when new phones are discounted and a lot of people upgrade at once. That is a good moment to sell — and a good moment to check the number properly rather than accepting the first trade-in offer at the checkout, which is priced to be convenient rather than generous.
Two faults that make waiting expensive
Some devices are worth less every month for reasons that have nothing to do with the market.
- A swelling battery. It gets worse, it can damage the screen and the back panel from the inside, and each of those is a further deduction. This is the clearest case for selling now.
- A failing screen. Spots and lines spread. A panel with one dead area today is a panel with a larger one in three months.
So when?
The honest answer is: the day you stop using the phone. That is when it is worth the most and when you are least likely to lose the box, the bill and the charger — all three of which add to the price.
If the phone has already been in the drawer a year, none of the above is a reason to leave it there another one. See what it is worth today; it takes about a minute and commits you to nothing.
See what your phone is worth
A price in about a minute, free doorstep pickup in a two-hour slot, and paid — cash or bank transfer — before our agent leaves.
Questions people ask
- When is the best time to sell a used phone?
- As soon as you stop using it. A phone loses value continuously, and a spare kept in a drawer is worth less every month while doing nothing at all.
- Should I sell before or after a new model launches?
- Before, if you can. A launch pushes the whole line down: the previous model becomes the older model, and its ceiling moves with it.
- Does keeping the box and bill slow depreciation?
- No, but they each add to the price whenever you do sell, so keeping them in one place is worth doing.
- Is there any reason to hold on to an old phone?
- A spare that genuinely gets used — a second SIM, a car navigation phone, a child's first device — is worth keeping. A phone in a drawer is not a spare, it is a stored loss.