Phones that still have TikTok installed on them are fetching high prices on eBay, days after the social media platform's short-lived ban in the United States. The TikTok app is currently unavailable in the Apple App Store — making it available only to those who previously installed the app before its recent ban.
Some scalpers are already betting they can score an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 on launch day and offering presales at two to three times the normal price.
The iPhone 15 and 16 models generally sell for between $1,200 and $1,500 on eBay. When the app was first banned iPhones with TikTok installed were listed for as much as $1 million during the app's 14 hour blackout, Ukrainian technology news outlet ITC reported.
Many people are listing iPhones with TikTok installed on eBay for thousands of dollars as the app remains absent on Google and Apple app stores.
As first spotted by Wired, there are currently about 9,000 eBay item listings for various smartphones that already have TikTok installed. There’s a wide array of devices depending on the preferred make,
Bobrov, the company stated: “At eBay, we’re leveraging the latest advances in AI to redefine the future of ecommerce for enthusiasts. The evolution from LLMs to agentic systems is happening faster than most of us would have predicted just a year ago,
At the time of publication, a search for "TikTok phone" produces over 24,000 results, with the lowest "Buy it Now" listing selling for $400 and the highest asking for (checks notes) $4,970,400 million with CapCut, a video editing app also owned by ByteDance pre-installed in addition to TikTok.
(CNN) – Sellers on eBay have a hot, new commodity: phones with TikTok still installed. TikTok was removed from app stores on Saturday ahead of a federal ban. While the app is available again for people who already had it downloaded, it remains missing from app stores.
Phones are going for thousands of dollars on online storefronts after Apple and Google took down ByteDance platforms.
There are also TikTok-loaded devices that are listed for sale for just hundreds of dollars. Some sellers advertise phones with active TikTok accounts, while others say the app is installed, but not linked to an account. Ebay did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment on the listings.
After TikTok’s brief ban in the U.S., a number of people have found a way to cash in by selling phones with the app already installed on eBay. When the short-form video app went dark on on Saturday (January 18) night, many people embraced the ban imposed by the Supreme Court by deleting it from their phones.