Apple put a two-per-customer cap on iPhone Duo pre-orders to keep scalpers out of the line. A week later, the scalpers sent back their answer: $10,000.
The foldable — Apple's first, with a 7.6-inch inner display and a starting price of $1,999 — went on sale Friday and sold out in hours at flagship stores. According to the New York Post, crowds formed outside Apple's Fifth Avenue cube as early as 4:15 a.m.; by 10 a.m. the store was out of stock for walk-ins, Reddit posts said. Across town, the World Trade Center store started taking orders at 6 a.m. with 200 people already in line.
By 9 a.m., eBay had the receipts. One seller listed a 2TB Night Sky unit for $8,000; another asked an eye-popping $10,000 — more than three times the $3,199 Apple charges for that configuration. A Craigslist seller in New York wanted $7,999. And buyers are paying: one eBay shopper grabbed a Star White 1TB model for $5,200, overnight shipping included.
The listings come with their own theater. One seller, offering to "negotiate," wrote that the price reflected "the time and effort it took to get this phone over two cold days camping outside Apple Fifth Avenue" — adding, with a straight face, "I really want everyone to experience this breathtaking new feat of engineering!"
This is a repeat, not a surprise. When pre-orders sold out within minutes on October 16 — pushing delivery dates to January 2027 — a 2TB unit was resold on eBay that same day at close to $10,000.
So why didn't the cap work? Because it targeted the wrong buyer. A two-per-customer rule blunts bulk bot orders, but it does nothing to stop a real person from camping out for two days and flipping two phones for a triple-digit-margin payday — roughly 3x before fees. When scarcity runs this deep, the arbitrage does the rest.
The bigger signal is demand itself. A $10,000 resale price is absurd, but it only exists because enough people want the Duo badly enough to make it real. Analysts have long argued Apple could do for foldables what it did for smartwatches and wireless earbuds — drag a niche category into the mainstream. Launch-day lines and triple-the-price listings are how that story starts.
What to watch: whether the 44% production boost Apple ordered on launch eve closes the gap before the holidays, and how fast the resale market cools when the next restock wave lands — store workers are reportedly pointing disappointed shoppers to fresh inventory each morning in the Apple Store app. Until then, the iPhone Duo has two prices: Apple's, and eBay's.
— via New York Post