Comment by majormajor
1 day ago
Apple products have had relatively high resale for a while. Only losing 8% in a year is probably extra unusual, and 1-year-old wasn't really ever the sweet spot, but a "sell used privately after a few years, roll onto the new one" has been a relatively common play.
Doing this particular one is definitely expecting the market squeeze to continue. "Worst case" is back to more "normal" depreciation. Where I'd expect to only be able to recoup more like 18k. But... if you look at GPU prices the last 3 years... it's not a crazy assumption that it won't drop that fast.
iPhone example since those are easiest to find in quantity: new iPhone 16 Pro Max for $1200, Gazelle would want $866 for "execllent" condition. Lost ~28% for one-model-back. iPhone 15 Pro Max, though: excellent priced at $667 here, only down another 23%, and gives you basically half-priced-upgrade if you can sell it for that and roll into the newest.
So to have never-more-than-one-model-old rough estimate at today's value-holding you'd be out $3600 for three new phones, with getting 1732 of that back, or 1868 for it (with a $334-per-year incremental cost of upgrade).
For never-more-than-two-models-back you'd be out $2400, getting back $866, for net $1534 spend, with a $167 incremental per-year upgrade cost once you buy the first one. Pretty good if you keep the phone in excellent condition and are happy to budget a bit over $10/month to be on a every-two-year upgrade train.
Well, you'd also eat the tax...
https://buy.gazelle.com/products/iphone-16-pro-max-256gb-unl...
https://buy.gazelle.com/products/iphone-15-pro-max-256gb-unl...
What you describe is something people with enough to make the first purchase and eat the cost when it breaks have been doing for years e.g. with cars. People on the lower end of money scale tend to use products for well over their economic lifetime saving way more and buying a cheap replacement if it breaks. Notable exception as stated being phones for some reason as it likely is a status symbol for more people in a [insert preferred external sexual characteristic] measuring contest.
> "Worst case" is back to more "normal" depreciation.
I would absolutely not count on that, if and when it drops it will drop hard.