Apple's discontinued iPod classic commands hefty premium on the secondary market
Sam Oliver
Three months after its official demise, Apple's iPod Classic — Â the last model to come packing a high-capacity spinning drive — Â remains popular on marketplace sites like eBay, with buyers willing to pay hundreds of dollars extra to get one.
The 160-gigabyte variant is on offer for $495.99 from third-party sellers Amazon, for instance, nearly double its original retail price of $260. The premium pricing was first noted by The Guardian.
More than 3,000 iPod Classic units are said to have been sold on eBay since October, while nearly 2,000 are currently listed for sale.
The 160-gigabyte iPod Classic remains the highest-capacity portable device Apple has ever produced, useful for those who prefer high-resolution audio or simply choose to carry their entire music collection with them. The current-generation iPod touch maxes out at 64 gigabytes, while the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPad Air 2 are available in 128-gigabyte configurations.
At the time it was pulled from shelves, the iPod Classic had gone five years without an update. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company was no longer able to source parts to build the device, and its sales numbers were not worth re-engineering with new components.
"We would have to make a whole new product," Cook said. "The engineering work to do that would be massive. The number of people who wanted it is very small."
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