For about $1,000, you may leave an Apple store with a brand-new, hermetically sealed iPhone that has been personalised for you by a verified Genius. Or, for hundreds or even thousands of dollars more, you can buy a used phone with a cracked screen and dirt-filled speakers, from someone on the internet. It just depends on how much you love TikTok.
When the app stopped working in the US on Saturday after Supreme Court backed a law that effectively banned it, some users deleted the app from their phones. The next day, the app started working again when President Trump said he was planning an executive order to pause enforcement of the law. But, as of Thursday, Apple and Google, which had removed TikTok from their app stores to comply with the law, had not made it available again.
The uncertainty about whether the app will return to app stores has caused some people who never removed the app to view their phones like golden tickets, coveted by anyone who misses thumbing through TikTok’s algorithm or had followings they can’t reach after they hastily removed the app.
It was not immediately clear how many people deleted TikTok and whether it will return to app stores. But people such as Piotr Gustab, 37, are seeing opportunity in the uncertainty. Gustab listed his iPhone 15 Pro with TikTok downloaded onto it for $3,000 on Facebook Marketplace. That’s about three times the cost of a brand-new iPhone 16 Pro. On Thursday, he had an offer for $1,200, still more than almost every brand-new iPhone and nearly twice as much as a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro without TikTok.
“UNLOCKED WITH TIKTOK,” an ad on Poshmark reads ($3,500). “iPhone 14 Pro UNLOCKED! W/ TikTok,” a listing on eBay calls out ($3,000). On Facebook Marketplace, sellers include screen recordings to verify that TikTok is installed on the phone. “This app is worth a lot,” said Izell Malloy, 20. He said he was offered $5,700 on Facebook Marketplace for his iPhone with TikTok on it.
Perhaps iPhone listings asking for $30,000 are not realistic. Even users going through the most severe TikTok withdrawals would be hard-pressed to buy a used phone for the price of a 2025 Toyota Prius. There are safer options. TikTok is still accessible on web browsers, and users on Reddit say they have found a workaround to download the app. If TikTok goes dark again, the app is “just a piece of art.” But art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. To someone, the renegade and pop-culture memes may be worth a few months’ rent.
