Solid gold iPhones on eBay: yeah right

Business 2.0 is reporting today that not just any iPhones have made their way onto eBay, but some "14 kart solid gold" 8GB units. Not entirely implausible if it were a month from now, but whereas normally we'd just ignore, this one's a little too tantalizing. Yes, the seller has a 99% positive rating on eBay, but seller ratings are easily and often inflated and used to gain credibility before selling one larger, fraudulent items. If this is the real deal (and someone wants to plunk down ten grand to find out), we're prepared to eat our 14 kart solid gold words.

[Via Business 2.0]

Read - eBay auction 1
Read - eBay auction 2
Read - eBay auction

[MAK1981 @ May 14th 2007 1:29PM]

"stupider" is a good word, too :o)

[Ryan @ May 14th 2007 6:52PM]

Ah, the penchant for languages to change. How dare they?

[Randall Bennett @ May 14th 2007 1:08PM]

Not that it's a dead giveaway or anything, but the "cingular" branding on the wireless meter probably adds yet another piece of ammunition to an already overloaded weapon of fraud detection.

[Greenline @ May 14th 2007 2:14PM]

Actually (not that I believe these autions). The images on www.apple.com still haven't changed to the AT&T verbage on the top left of the phone. I think the only time we have seen the AT&T verbage is in a screen shot of the iPhone commercial.

[Rob @ May 14th 2007 1:12PM]

Looks like they are just betting on it being able to be purchased at an Apple store immediately following the Stevenote on June 11th - which could happen. Then goldify it and ship it out.

www.rollgreen.com

[Nando @ May 14th 2007 1:16PM]

LOL! Wouldn't it be stupider if the winning bidder won a link to where to get the product?

[cochell @ May 14th 2007 1:28PM]

let me take out a loan and find out. (O_o)

[bobdole @ May 14th 2007 1:45PM]

I dunno, the guy selling it is too sketchy for me...

His feedback includes 57 with him as the seller, and all of those are private listings...

The feedbacks mention mystery auctions, clothing, and "I wish I won, better luck next time I guess"..

The guy prolly got those 101 feedbacks over the course of the last 4 years by selling off random boxes of trinkets and old clothes... or selling empty envelopes with the idea that one has money in it...

Not exactly the kind of guy you hand $9500 to and hope to get an iphone in 3 months.

[David Scott @ May 14th 2007 1:47PM]

This person is selling 2 phones and states in each auction that the winner will have the only gold iPhone???????????

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ May 14th 2007 1:47PM]

One word: tacky.

[Seamus Bartlett @ May 14th 2007 1:48PM]

Yeah, but the shipping's $10. That's where they really get ya.

[Ratchet the Lombax @ May 14th 2007 1:55PM]

Sorry but I don't even want a regular iphone much less a "solid gold" one. My current phone does what it is supposed to, send and receive phone calls and that is all I need it to do.

[KaiBeezy @ May 14th 2007 2:03PM]

.
i sent SJ a phone call about this
he sent me a call back
which i did receive
he said it was
cingularly umplausible
so that's that, eh?
.

[Seamus Bartlett @ May 14th 2007 1:57PM]

Oh. And I don't see any reason why this in inplausible. These are presales---it just means they're gaurenteeing that they'll be able to get an iPhone when it comes out in a month. No one's saying that they actually have them now.

However, the seller of the third, non-gold iPhone made a mistake...their auction just ended like a minute ago, but they posted they're auction on 5-11-07. It says "**I guarantee the Apple iphone 8 GB will be in my hands 30 days from start of listing 5-11-07**" but 30 days from May 11th is June 10th. May has 31 days. The keynote is June 11th.

And who knows what would happen if Apple delayed the release by a day or two.

[RootAg @ May 14th 2007 1:58PM]

The insurance to ship a $10K item is only $5? FRAUD!

[djpurpose @ May 14th 2007 2:01PM]

It's interesting that there are no real photo's of the phone. For 10K I would want to see like 20 pics at different angles taken with a 10MP camera and a good quality video with lighting showing off the gold. One picture of a 10K item looks sketchy especially since I could have done the same thing in photoshop in like 5 min. Also all the private auctions look weird, I bet that the auctions were penny items and the people that bought them are part of a ring of ebayers that boost ratings of sellers.

Aside from that, why is there a iphone story every day? All the other tech news places could care less about this news and are talking about real stories. Is engadget owned my apple or what?

[trainwrecka @ May 14th 2007 2:02PM]

This is gonna match my 14K gold MacGrill Pro, so I have to get my buy on.

[Neil @ May 14th 2007 2:04PM]

I would expect that we will see more and more of this type of stuff as the release date of the actual iPhone comes closer. It is not out of the question that we see a real iPhone on ebay before the release date. It'll get pulled by Ebay + Apple Legal though.

[Patrick @ May 14th 2007 2:06PM]

Is it just me that thought the fact that it's supposedly a gold iPhone and the contact on screen is Gary Knox is a tad ironic? Seeing the whole Fort Knox gold reserve thing.

[Phil Ringsmuth @ May 14th 2007 2:18PM]

No one seemed to notice that the word "karat" or "carat" is nowhere on this listing (at least the first one.) The word used to describe the phone is "KART".

If someone can tell me what "kart" has to do with gold, then I might give this auction another (phony) chance at being (not very) legit.

[Paul @ May 14th 2007 4:02PM]

He's gonna need a KART to haul off all the money from the suckas who buy those phones.

[McGinley @ May 14th 2007 4:45PM]

On the auction page it is described as "14 kart" gold.

[Andir3.0 @ May 14th 2007 2:20PM]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a solid gold phone would not be a very good way to communicate. You need silicon, copper, and a few other elements.

[SteveMax @ May 14th 2007 2:24PM]

Digg it: http://www.digg.com/apple/Solid_gold_iPhones_for_sale

[Brett Seymour @ May 14th 2007 2:41PM]

If you read a little further you will see that he/she says the iPhone will be shipped 30 days from the starting date (5-11-07) which is 6/11/07 the rumored launch date for the iPhone. So no deal here! I'll just wait 30 days and pick mine up at a store for a lot less. Or better yet wait for the 2nd generation with 3G!

[Nick Huang @ May 14th 2007 2:57PM]

its not legitimate...reason why? I've done a preorder once on ebay and the seller told me repeatedly that some of the items had not yet arrived, and so on. In good faith I believed him and let it continue, but after almost 2 months I started to get antsy. I looked up ebay's policy on reporting and found out that there is a certain time limit to when you can file claims efficiently (after 60 days things get more complicated). I did eventually get the books from him (he was an honest seller) but not without some strife.

To me, the one month preorder time cries out scam to me.

[Vince @ May 14th 2007 4:05PM]

It's not entirely impossible.
There are solid gold and gold plated nokia phones.

[henry.anding @ May 14th 2007 4:06PM]

i also thought it was interesting that whe you ask a question a message pops up "the user is registerd on another ebay site (outside the us) and may speak a different language"

i was just going to harass the guy about everything that's been mentioned here, but got a laugh at that instead

[obiwan @ May 14th 2007 4:40PM]

Well, somebody put in a bid on the second iPhone. It's closed/sold. I put my money that gperks46 had a sock puppet put in that bid...

[Wes @ May 14th 2007 4:56PM]

Who's the dork that decided which one would be solid gold and which one would be gold plated ?
If you were going to throw out for a solid gold iphone wouldn't you want it to be 8GB instead of 4?

[kodakon @ May 14th 2007 5:03PM]

Seems kinda funny that he's selling a "solid gold" 4GB for $9,500, but the 24k gold "plated" 8GB is only 5 grand. Hmmmm.....????

[Josh @ May 14th 2007 5:08PM]

Well it seems Apple have slightly redesigned the phone: http://i6.ebayimg.com/02/i/000/9e/e2/4d62_1.JPG
Or is that just a fake? Hmm, I wonder...

(from http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170111922087&ssPageName=MERCOSI_VI_ROSI_PR4_PCN_BIX&refitem=150121663975&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&refwidgettype=osi_widget)

[Ignacio @ May 14th 2007 6:18PM]

iJohnny i5!

[Dave H. @ May 14th 2007 7:03PM]

If 14 kart gold wasn't enough, he is now selling a 24 kart gold iPhone for $5,000.00. A steal since the 14 kart iPhone is still $10,000.00. Here's the link - http://cgi.ebay.com/Pre-Sale-Apple-iPhone-8GB-24-KART-GOLD-PLATED_W0QQitemZ150122450731QQihZ005QQcategoryZ64355QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Erik @ May 14th 2007 7:13PM]

Note that not once does it say 14 Karat. It always says 14 Kart. I don't know what 14 Kart Gold is... but it's probably not worth as much as 14 Karat Gold ;)

[hamster3000 @ May 14th 2007 9:48PM]

Well the item is not on ebay any more. I wonder....

[Chris Friend @ May 17th 2007 9:36PM]

Shouldn't it be karat? And and selling one larger, fraudulent items should be item.