Unlike Xbox, iPhone futures prove to be a bad investment

Flashner wasted no time. He began advertising the extra phone while still in line at an Apple store. During his 21-hour wait, he posted half a dozen different ads to Craigslist— with prices ranging from $800 to $1,200 — and waited for the calls to come in. But no calls came as consumers expect that stores will soon have phones in stock. He continued to advertise the extra phone through the weekend, and ended up with just one call, which went nowhere. On Wednesday, he returned the phone.

Flashner, 25, who manages an audio-visual equipment rental company, is not the only would-be iPhone reseller whose plan failed to follow the script. “I haven’t heard of a single person who sold one,” he said.

Across the nation, people looking to make a quick and easy profit bought one, two or as many phones as they could by recruiting friends to stand in line with them. Many of them were the first to get in line, camping overnight outside the stores. But now they are finding that the iPhone is much more like a Harry Potter book than a hard-to-find Wii video game machine: a great thing to be one of the first to own, but not high in resale value because supply is not constrained.

Corey Spring, a columnist at newsvine.com who analysed eBay auctions, estimated that a significant number of sellers “were only making their money back, even closing at a loss.” Most Apple stores in the US have no phones available, but the most determined customers seem to have been able to buy a phone. Few people seem willing to pay even $100 over the retail price. Some frustrated resellers say they will keep trying, then return their extra phone or phones within the 14-day return period.

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