6 Most Valuable Antique & Vintage Phones to Look Out For

Top values at a glance:

There's nothing that'll make you feel like you jumped through time more than picking up that dusty candlestick phone in the thrift store you pass every time you visit. These antique phones are immediately recognizable thanks to their little detached megaphones that you hold to your ear. While examples from the early 20th century include the rotary dial, the earliest ones from the 1890s don't have a dialing system because people used switchboard operators to connect them to the proper line.

Pristine examples with their cords and receivers intact are worth a lot more than most of the corded and cordless phones that followed. Generally, these phones from a bygone era are worth about $100-$400, on average, like this American Bell rotary dial candlestick phone from the 1890s that sold for $125.

You've probably heard your parents or grandparents slip into one of their "back in my day" diatribes about how difficult it used to be to call someone on the phone. When you were out and about, you had to make sure you had change on you and the phone numbers you wanted to call memorized (if the pay phone didn't have a phone book available) to make any kind of call. Hilariously enough, these electric pay phones that were a dirty fixture of every train station wall that no one ever gave a second glance to are worth a lot more money now.

Whether it's Western Electric, Northern Electric, or another phone company, these electric 3-slot wall-mounted pay phones are typically listed for around $300 online. Take this vintage Northern Electric 3-slot pay phone in a lovely mint green, for example; it's listed for an impressive $349 on eBay.

Strap your brick of a cell phone around your shoulders, we're heading back to 1983, when Motorola debuted the first commercial cell phone, the DynaTac 8000x. This wildly impractical device was literally shaped like a brick, bright white, and cost nearly $10,000 of today's money to buy. Thankfully, cell phones have come a long way since then, but these delightful reminders of just how far they've come are still bringing in thousands of dollars at auction. For instance, you can find a 'museum' quality one listed for almost $4,000 on eBay. Even nonworking, beaten up ones are worth a few hundred dollars, like this brick listed for $499.

Before Steve Jobs blew the world's mind with his futuristic take on the smart phone, the computer giant IBM created the Simon Personal Communicator - the predecessor to our beloved smartphone. Much closer in functionality and design to the PDAs that were everywhere in the 1990s, the concept of building a tiny computer that could fit in your pocket was truly ahead of its time.

If you come across one of these black devices with its green screens, you might mistake it for a grungy Pokedex instead of the cell phone it was meant to be. Either way, unused and boxed examples of these are usually worth around $500-$2,000. Recently, one manufactured in 1994 sold at a Bonham's auction for $1,875.

The smartphone that changed it all: Apple's first iPhone debuted in 2007 and quickly turned into a massive and critical success. Once cell phones were around, every few decades were defined by one particular brand and model. For example, if you were a teen in the 2000s, you probably slept with your slim Motorola Razr slipped under your pillow. Cell phones like the Blackberry and Razr became a thing of the past with the iPhone, and nothing has trumped it since. With new generations coming out every year, you might just want to return to the original, where holding it in your hand felt like you were looking directly into the future. Early Apple products are super collectible, and you can find mint condition 1st gen iPhones listed for thousands of dollars, like this completely sealed one listed for $23,000 on eBay.

While most people revere Motorola for bringing the Razr into teenage hands everywhere, the company did have a diverse catalog that often gets overlooked. One of the most infamous among collectors today is their Aura R1 phone, that was released in 2009. This luxury phone was incredibly slim, featured a sleek design reminiscent of Art Deco, and cost a few thousand dollars to buy (which, at the time, was a small fortune for a cell phone). Nowadays, these luxury phones have only increased in value, ramping up to somewhere between $2,000-$4,000 in mint condition.

Selling vintage electronics can be a bit of a nightmare since there's not a lot of consistency in how things are priced and the market is incredibly niche, particularly for outdated phones. But, so long as you follow a couple of rules, you should be able to make a little cash on that old Motorola that's been taking up space in your junk drawer.

As Elle Woods would probably put it, vintage is the new pink. People just can't get enough of all things analog from the near past, and these hilarious simple devices (compared to today's tech) are all the rage with some collectors and other nostalgia-driven TikTokers. All you have to do is add some extra cash to your rainy day fund by selling the antique and vintage phones taking up space in your cabinets.