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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

Assuming we're talking about the base prices for both versions, I believe you could significantly subsidize the iPad 2 by selling your iPad. Sure, there's still extra money involved, but probably less than a quarter of the base price. It's less frivolous, and probably will be more common, than you make it sound.

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Hard for me to believe that people will want to buy a used, out of warranty iPad with half the ram and half the cores of the new model for ~$100 less. In fact, the apple certified refurb with a new battery, shell and 1 year warranty is already $429.

Last week (when I posted mine for sale) Gazelle.com was offering $280 for a 32GB Wifi model with moderate wear and tear.

Would be interesting to know where it will end up and how much it will then be sold for in turn.

Apple hardware tends to retain its market value better than most consumer electronics. I've always offset the cost of new Macs by selling the previous one; typically I can still get at least half of the price back on a 3-year-old machine. A low-end iPad 1 seems to be settling to a market price of around $350.

More anecdotal data: a friend of mine would surely buy my iPad 1 off me for ~$200 or so. Considering I don't want 3G and 16 GB works fine for me, that leaves it at $300.

Uh, actually, I hadn't seriously contemplated this until now. Hmm. Come to think of it, the major hurdle is probably getting this scheme past my SO. :)

I bought an iPad 1 for $499. It would be hard to sell for more than the $350 that Apple is selling refurbs for, and I can buy a new one for $499. So that means $150 to use it for 11 months which seems rather excessive.

OTOH, I could have sold it last month for at least $400, which would be a much better deal but would mean I would have no iPad for one month.

OTOOH, if I keep the iPad 1 another year, it will probably still be sellable for $250, and that is $250 for 2 years of use which is not bad.

At that point you're just trading your time to save money like some dirty hippy linux user.

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