When I came back to the UK in the summer of 2016 after a 9-month trip away I didn’t have a UK phone, I had an Australian Smartphone that cost me about £15* which wasn’t worth unlocking so I needed a new phone to start applying for jobs with.
I was back in my home village where there aren’t any phone shops so I headed to Tesco looking for a medium range phone and found the Lumia 550, a decent enough phone that cost about £50-60 new at the time. Pay as you go and a smartphone, boom everything I could possibly need. (As an added bonus my parents had left over Tesco Clubcard vouchers they weren’t using so I got a huge discount on it)
Now that phone served me extremely well, lasting about 14 months before it started playing up and glitching out, then another 4 months before I got too frustrated and had to get a new one**.
That was back in February and my old phone has sat neglected in a cupboard ever since, just gathering dust.
I’m actually getting ready to move next week so it’s been dug out and I was just about to pack it on autopilot but then I stopped, and wondered why?
I have absolutely no need for an outdated smartphone that I’m never going to use I might as well declutter and get rid of it. But it seemed a shame to throw it out so I thought maybe I could sell it, deciding if I got £20 2 years after I bought it for the price I paid that would be great!
I didn’t want to start an eBay listing, or sell it on Gumtree, I would no doubt get more money but also more hassle which I didn’t want to take on while packing up and organising for a big move.
I saw someone on twitter saying the sold their old phone on Music Magpie and it was super easy so I thought why not. looked it up, put in all the details and the price popped up.
Yup, £4…
Hmmm, may have been overly ambitious with my £20, let’s try google “sell your phone online”, sweet, Mazuma Mobile, again I put in all the details and the offer flashed up.
£2…
Things were going from bad to worse.
But then I remembered something, there’s a wee phone unlocking shop down the road with one of those neon flashing signs saying “we buy phones”, I was off!
I was still secretly hoping for my £20 but was going to be happy with £5, it was an old low end phone, if I didn’t sell it I’d bin it and that just seemed to wasteful. Besides £5 is still 20% more than the music magpie offer.
I went in and the guy took a look at it, said it wouldn’t be worth much (which I’m sure he says to everyone) and how much did I want? I went for it:
“20 quid”
“No way” he said “£10, it’s not worth anything.”
Meanwhile, I was dancing in my head, £10?? Awesome!
“How about 15?”
“No way”
I had to try, so I went for £10, he turned it off and on, did a rough check, while I looked around at the odd collection of old electric keyboards, DVDs and karaoke machines, he was happy and handed me a crisp £10 note.
Result!
£10 for something I’d considered throwing away.
Now I know of people who have old iPhone’s sitting in drawers, old high-end phones that were bought new, I’m sure they’re worth more than a tenner and you’re not going to use them again. Why not sell it? I’m pretty sure every city in the UK is full of the little off-brand pawn shops/phone repair shops like the one I went into.
Even better get it on Ebay. Or Gumtree, I’m going to do that in the future but this time I just wanted hassle free, it only took me about 15 minutes to walk there do the deal and walk back.
Now I have a tenner in my wallet which is perfect timing because I’m meeting a friend for dinner tonight at a restaurant where you can get an incredible pizza for £6.50 so a tenner may well cover my dinner bill!
I’d call that a success.
So do you have an old phone sitting in a drawer?
– Flint
*It was phone full of apps and games that I didn’t want and couldn’t delete, I’m assuming they paid for it to be made so cheap.
** It’s a fancy shmancy Sony Xperia on contract. I wanted a good enough camera for blog photos and to be able to get to all my online work. It was the perfect balance of good quality while being a fraction of the price of a new iPhone or Samsung.
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