TikTok-installed phones are being sold on eBay for exorbitant amounts of money. It seems that some individuals may actually be making these purchases.
Even though former President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday delaying any potential ban of the app for 75 days, TikTok is still missing from all U.S. app stores—without any indication from Apple or Google about when it might return. Consequently, if you’re in the United States and you delete the app or lose your device, there’s currently no way to re-download it. This situation could pose a significant problem—and a costly one—for content creators, brand marketers, and social media managers.
Taking advantage of this predicament, some sellers on eBay are seizing the opportunity to profit. A quick search for “TikTok phone” reveals over 9,000 listings for used smartphones from brands like Apple and Samsung, all featuring the TikTok app pre-installed.
Sellers achieve this by merely signing out of the iCloud or Google account linked to the device, rather than performing a factory reset. Buyers must then be cautious not to sync their existing cloud backup to avoid losing the app they just purchased, as well as ensuring that any security settings have been removed by the seller.
It’s essential for anyone contemplating this option to proceed with extreme caution, especially given the steep prices many sellers are demanding.
You can find phones with TikTok listed for as much as $50,000 under eBay’s Buy It Now format; however, it’s hard to believe that anyone genuinely thinks their phone is worth that—and there’s no evidence to suggest they are finding buyers.
There are many more listings in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, but whether these are actually being purchased at such prices remains questionable.
Nonetheless, despite the inflated prices, there is clearly some demand. These phones are indeed selling, but determining the exact amounts is more challenging. Filtering for the “sold” option on eBay reveals numerous completed sales, but most are listed with an undisclosed “best offer accepted” note attached.
Any auctions with extraordinarily high prices appear to have their items relisted shortly after, implying an unsuccessful sale, with only those closely aligned with the market value for secondhand phones actually being sold.
A quick review of current auctions also indicates that these phones are fetching much more realistic prices than an initial search might indicate.
Whether the TikTok premium is genuine is still uncertain, but that hasn’t deterred sellers. During the time this article was written, the number of TikTok phone listings surged by over 2,000 items—a sense of urgency likely fueled by the possibility of the app returning to U.S. app stores at any moment.
Presently, searching for TikTok in either Apple’s App Store or Google Play brings up notices citing legal restrictions as the reason for the app’s absence. This comes even though Trump’s executive order explicitly instructed the Department of Justice to “take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act.”
As we await whether concerns will settle and TikTok will make a comeback before the 75-day period concludes, the potential deals Trump might negotiate in the meantime remain unclear. However, users cut off from their beloved video-sharing app aren’t entirely out of options. Recently, thousands have turned to another Chinese-owned social media platform, RedNote, which is now racing to employ English moderators while attempting to capitalize on its sudden popularity.
At the same time, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has been actively courting displaced TikTok users, rolling out a slew of new features and even offering significant incentives of up to $5,000 to major influencers to join its platforms.
