Chinese iPhone 14 scalpers are apparently struggling to recover their investment as they are forced to sell the handheld for less than the MSRP.

Like it or not, scalpers are an integral part of the free market, and there is little anyone can do about them. Whether it’s the Playstation 5 or the newest iPhone, they’re always ready to scoop up whatever inventory is available and sell it for outrageous profits to diehard fans with little patience and loaded pockets. That said, scalping does have its risks, and the recent iPhone 14 launch is a clear example of that. Chinese media has been reporting that scalpers have been forced to sell their brand new iPhone 14 smartphones on the street for less than the official launch price just to cut their losses.

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A man who lost his iPhone 10 months ago while canoeing on a river in England was shocked to have it returned in working order by someone who spotted it on the bottom of that same river.

Earlier this month, Miguel Pacheco was canoeing with his family on the River Wye, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, when he spotted something blue in the water. It turned out to be an iPhone covered with mud and full of water, but instead of throwing it back in, Pacheco decided to take it with him and see if it still worked. Chances were low, considering where the phone had been found, but after using an air compressor to dry it out and placing it in the airing cupboard overnight, Miguel Pacheco was shocked to see the charging icon pop up on the screen when he plugged it in.

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When gold, platinum and precious stones aren’t enough to sell custom iPhones, it’s time to bring out the good stuff, and there are few things more intriguing than real dinosaur teeth.

Caviar has been producing custom luxury variants of popular iPhone models for many years now, but this year they’re doing something completely different. After producing various types of gold-plated and diamond-encrusted iPhones, the Russian company is now introducing real dinosaur teeth as part of its arsenal. The recently-unveiled Tyrannophone is an iPhone 13 Pro made from a lightweight composite material featuring 24 K gold-plated alloy inserts. But the truly special thing about the Tyrannophone is the embossed tyrannosaurus head on the back, more precisely one of the dinosaur’s teeth, which is actually an 80 million-year-old T-Rex tooth.

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A Japanese man who has been struggling to sell a misprinted iPhone 11 Pro found himself inundated with tempting offers from buyers after photos of his device became the subject of fake news circulating on social media.

A few days ago, during my daily internet surfing sessions, I came across a South Korean article about an iPhone with a misaligned Apple logo that had apparently sold for $2,700. The explanation was that Apple’s quality control is so stringent that whenever design errors slip by, the handheld in question becomes somewhat of a collectible. Only it turned out that, like many other internet stories, this was just fake news picked up by several popular news outlets that didn’t bother doing any research.

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A man who accidentally lost his iPhone 11 while paddling on a lake in March of last year recently posted photos of the handheld miraculously retrieved from the bottom of the lake after more than a year. The handheld was in need of a recharge, but otherwise worked perfectly!

The owner of the iPhone, a Taiwanese man named Chen Yj, recently took to a public Facebook group to tell the amazing story of how his handheld survived a year underwater. Writing on the Bangfu1 Commune Facebook group, Chen said that he lost his iPhone 11 in March of 2020, while paddling on Sun Moon Lake, in Taiwan. Photos shared on the public group show him wearing an orange vest, with the Apple handheld around his neck. At one point, the man falls off his board, and the phone can be seen sinking to the bottom of the lake. Little did Chen know that he would not only retrieve his phone a year later, but it would be in perfect working condition.

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A Thai teenager recently got his five minutes of internet fame, after going online to buy a cheap iPhone, only to receive a coffee table shaped like the Apple smartphone.

Usually, when a luxury product is being sold for much cheaper than its market price, you owe it to yourself to check that everything is legit, but sometimes you just get carried away and push that ‘buy’ button to make sure someone doesn’t snatch it from under your noise. That’s exactly what this teenage Apple fan from Thailand did recently, in hope of getting a much-coveted handheld for cheap. Only he knew that something was definitely wrong when the package was delivered…

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The new Apple iPhone 12 was only announced a few days ago, but if you can’t wait until its official launch, or if you can’t afford to buy it when it comes out, you can simply make your old handheld look like one.

Chinese media recently reported on a popular accessory that iPhone fans have been raving about online – a new case that basically turns older Apple smartphones, like the iPhone X or iPhone 11 into a replica of the yet-to-be-released iPhone 12. Only days after the official announcement of the iPhone 12, the new case was already available in Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei Electronics Market for a reported 450 yuan ($67) for the iPhone X and 350 yuan ($52) for the iPhone 11.

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A viral TikTok video of what looks like a concrete fence decorated with hundreds of iphone 6 smartphones has been doing the rounds online in Asia, sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

Ok, so the iPhone 6 isn’t the newest Apple handheld, but I actually have a couple of friends who can’t afford to upgrade to a newer iPhone and are very happy with their sixth generation Apple smartphone, so to see this model used as decorative tiles for a fence was a bit of a shock. And I apparently wasn’t the only one surprised by the TikTok video posted by Vietnamese user @minhhienapple last week, as his clip showing the fence of a rural home decorated with hundreds of iPhones has so far been viewed over 1.7 million times.

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A Russian iPhone user recently filed a one million ruble lawsuit against Apple, accusing the American corporation of indirectly turning him gay.

In a court filing that went viral on Russia’s internet, the plaintiff alleges that he became “mired in a same-sex relationship” after receiving the wrong kind of cryptocurrency on a virtual wallet app that he installed on his iPhone in 2017. The man, identified as one D. Razumilov claims that he received 69 GayCoins – a cryptocurrency designed for member of the LGBT community – from an anonymous sender. The mysterious transfer was accompanied the message “don’t knock it till you’re tried it”, which kind of made sense to Razumilov and eventually pushed him to become involved in a gay relationship.

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Xiao Wang was only 17 years old when he decided to sell one of his kidneys in order to buy the iPhone 4 he couldn’t otherwise afford. After the operation Wang was told he was going to have a normal life with just one kidney, but almost eight years on, the 24-year-old is permanently disabled and dependent on dialysis.

Back in 2011, the iPhone 4 was Apple’s flagship smartphone and a status symbol at Xiao Wang’s school in Chengzhou, China. However, he came from a poor family who couldn’t afford to buy him the trendy gadget, so he decided to sell one of his healthy organs in order to get his hands on enough money to buy the coveted device. With help from a middleman, Wang got in touch with shady characters who specialized in trading organs on the black market and agreed to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan ($3,200), more than enough to buy the iPhone 4 he so badly desired. Unfortunately, this foolish decision would completely ruin his life.

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A man named Valery recently became the star of what may very well be the most epic fail in the history of iPhone launches. After becoming the first person in a monstrously long queue to set foot inside the Apple store in Moscow to buy an iPhone XS, he left empty-handed because he couldn’t afford to buy it.

On the morning of September 28, the Apple store in Moscow finally opened its doors to the crowd of people that had been lining up outside for over 24 hours to buy the new iPhone XS and XS Max. Apple fans have been queuing up for new iPhone launches all around the world for years now, but what made this particular event special was the amount of fail involved. For one thing, the first eight people at the head of the giant queue evaporated minutes before the store opened. It turns out they had never planned on buying a phone, hoping to sell their places in line for absurd amounts of money, instead. But they were actually the smart ones, because the ninth guy planned to do the same thing, only he didn’t have the brains to bail before the doors opened.

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A man in Liuzhou, China’s Guanxi Autonomous Region, recently made national news headlines after getting his arm stuck in a squat toilet while trying to retrieve his iPhone 8.

The man, surnamed Tang, had been drinking with some friends at a local hotel’s cafe, last weekend. At one point he had to go to the bathroom and apparently decided that checking his phone while relieving himself in a squat toilet was a good idea. It never is, particularly if you’ve bee drinking. As you’ve probably already anticipated, Tang fumbled, and dropped his new iPhone 8 in the toilet.

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Chen Ming, a young video-game designer from Shenzen, China, recently sparked the envy of iPhone fans all around the world, after buying 25 brand new iPhone X smartphones and arranging them in a heart shape to propose to his girlfriend.

To pull of the over-the-top marriage proposal, Chen Ming pre-ordered 25 iPhone Xs, and, on November 3, when the newest Apple handheld officially launched in China, he arranged them all in the shape of a heart on a bed of red rose metals, with an engagement ring in the middle. To make sure that his girlfriend didn’t suspect a thing, Chen enlisted the help of her friends, asking them to bring her to the specified location of the surprise.

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Swiss luxury goods company Golden Dreams recently unveiled the iPhone 7 Carbon Concept Edition, a special version of the popular Apple smartphone featuring a hand-made carbon fiber casing that makes it extremely light and nearly impossible to break. But before you get too excited, you should know that they only made 77 units, each priced at a whopping $17,000.

The Geneva-based company claims that the the iPhone 7 Carbon Concept Edition is the world’s first smartphone to have a full carbon casing hand-crafted from a single block of carbon fiber. Golden Dreams CEO, Alexandre Masson said that he received many requests for an iPhone 7 light enough and strong enough to fit the fast life pace of his rich and powerful customers, but he didn’t know exactly how to approach this challenge until he saw some beautiful wristwatches made out of carbon fiber. He knew that was the material Golden Dreams needed to use to reach their objective. They spent two years researching how to machine the casing out of a solid block of carbon fiber, but Masson says that the end result was more than worth the wait, exceeding all their expectations in terms of both aesthetics and functionality.

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A brand new iPhone 7 costs as much as four and a half average salaries in Ukraine, but a local retailer is giving Apple fans the chance to get one for free, by simply changing their names to “iPhone Seven”.

Allo.ua, Ukraine’s largest mobile phone retailer, is currently running a very unusual iPhone 7 giveaway. The company is asking people to legally change their first name to ‘iPhone’ and their last name to ‘Seven’ for the chance to win Apple’s latest handheld. Participants must first visit their State Registry of Civil Status Acts and fill out an application to officially change their name. Once their new ID is issued, they have to take a selfie with it and send the photo to Allo.ua as confirmation of the name change. If they are among the first five people to have successfully changed their name to ‘iPhone Seven’, they qualify to receive an actual 32GB iPhone 7, and will be invited to visit by an Allo store, show their official ID, and pick up their prize.

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