When is the best time to sell your iPhone?

Phones are not wine. Every month an iPhone sits in a drawer, it loses value, and the loss is not smooth: it happens in steps, and the biggest step is September.

When Apple announces new iPhones each autumn, the whole used market moves down a rung within weeks. Buyback prices for every older model drop as supply floods in from upgraders. If you are thinking of selling and it is currently summer, sell before the announcement, not after. The same phone can be worth noticeably less in October than it was in August.

The other timing trap is the drawer itself. A phone that would fetch good money today fetches less next year regardless of season, and a phone left long enough eventually joins the original iPhone SE in the category we cannot buy at all. The most expensive place to store a phone is a drawer.

If you are upgrading, the clean sequence is: transfer to the new phone first, then sell the old one the same week. Our price is locked when you order, so even if the market moves while your phone is in the post, your quote does not.