Best Selling Phones on eBay in September 2026
The best selling phones on eBay moved an estimated 37,760 units in 30 days, worth $8,683,596 against 91,852 listings, a 41.1% sell-through at $229.97 a sale. Unlocked stock clears fastest. Read the headline rate carefully: ten sellers take 73.8% of the revenue.
Market snapshot
Best-selling phone segments
The phone category does not sell evenly. These are the segments driving it, with the demand, pricing and competition that show which niches still have room.
Top phone products to source
Specific items you can act on, not broad groups. Each shows demand, pricing and the attribute that matters most when sourcing phones.
Top phone sellers
Know who you are up against in phones. These are the biggest sellers in the category, a fast read on your competition and what a winning store looks like.
Top phone search terms
The exact phrases phone buyers type into eBay. Put them in your listing titles to match live demand and show up in more searches.
The U.S. electronics retail market in context
How the U.S. electronics retail market is trending, from official U.S. Census data, and what it means for your eBay phone sourcing. These are national retail figures, not eBay.
What this means for sellers
U.S. electronics and appliance store sales ran at $8.11B in July 2026, up 4.7% on July 2025 and 2.4% short of the April 2022 peak of $8.32B. The line has climbed for a year, from $7.75B last July to $8.20B in April. There is no phone-only retail series, so this is the honest proxy: NAICS 443 is the group that contains consumer electronics retail. New handset sales are what free up last-generation ones, and last-generation handsets are the stock this page is about.
U.S. online sales reached $330B in the second quarter of 2026, up 12.4% year on year and about 3 times their 2018 level, with the Q4 2025 holiday quarter peaking at $365B. Phones suit that shift, because a model name, a storage figure, a carrier status and a condition grade describe a handset precisely enough to buy it without handling it.
On eBay, ZIK tracked an estimated 37,760 phones sold in the last 30 days, worth $8,683,596 against 91,852 live listings, a 41.1% sell-through at $229.97 a sale, with competition scoring Medium. That 41.1% is the number to read carefully. Ten sellers took 58.1% of the units and 73.8% of the revenue from 1,013 listings, 1.10% of the pool, and the largest of them, cellfeee, moved 9,834 units from 185 listings. Strip those ten out and everyone else clears 17.4%, not 41.1%. These are refurbishing operations buying in volume and grading to a standard, which is the shape of this category rather than a distortion of it.
Carrier locking is the main thing separating fast stock from slow. Unlocked handsets clear 29,152 units against 25,338 listings, a rate above 100% because one listing can carry many units, at $272.04 a sale. Samsung Galaxy turns over at 59.8% and iPhone at 34.9%, so Samsung moves faster while Apple prices higher at $298.83. Nokia is the quiet one, 32.4% against only 1,214 listings, scoring Low competition and High opportunity at $49.42 a sale, and Xiaomi is the warning at 2.8%. Watch the asking column as well: Samsung Galaxy listings ask a mean $967.10 and realise $229.23, a factor of 4.2, and iPhone asks $1,202.50 and realises $298.83.
Research more categories
These are the best selling categories on eBay we track, ranked from live sold-listing data. Every category below has its own report, refreshed each month.
Electronics & media
Automotive & beauty
Home & living
Best Selling Phones on eBay FAQs
It can be, but this page's headline needs a caveat before you act on it. ZIK tracked 37,760 phones sold in 30 days for $8,683,596, a 41.1% sell-through against 91,852 live listings at $229.97 a sale, with competition scoring Medium. That 41.1% is not a rate an individual seller should expect. Ten sellers took 73.8% of the revenue from just 1,013 listings, and the single largest, cellfeee, moved 9,834 units on its own. These are refurbishing operations buying in volume and grading to a standard. The category is genuinely liquid, but the headline rate is a dealer rate.
Unlocked handsets, by a wide margin. The unlocked segment cleared 29,152 units against 25,338 listings, a sell-through above 100% because a single listing can carry many units. Carrier locking is the main thing suppressing turnover elsewhere. By brand, Samsung Galaxy moved 18,547 units at 59.8% sell-through and iPhone 12,712 at 34.9%, so Samsung turns over faster while Apple commands the higher price at $298.83 against $229.23.
Look away from the two brands everyone lists. Samsung Galaxy and iPhone both score High competition on this page, with 31,025 and 36,425 live listings between them. Nokia is the clearest gap in this window: 393 units at 32.4% sell-through against only 1,214 listings, scoring Low competition and High opportunity. Motorola and Google Pixel sit in the middle at Medium competition with sell-through near 30%. The trade is volume for elbow room, and the cheaper segments turn at a much lower price point, with Nokia averaging $49.42.
The category average sold price is $229.97, but the spread by brand is wide and worth planning around. iPhone averaged $298.83 a sale, unlocked handsets generally $272.04, Samsung Galaxy $229.23, Xiaomi $238.52 and OnePlus $205.42, while Google Pixel came in at $170.90, Motorola $78.28 and Nokia $49.42. Condition drives most of the variance inside each of those: the top-selling listings on this page are graded refurbished stock described as Good, Very Good or Excellent rather than new.
ZIK ranks from sold-listing data rather than from listing counts, weighing units sold, sell-through and competition together. A segment with heavy volume and heavy competition can score worse than a quieter one that clears stock quickly, which is why Nokia scores High opportunity on this page while iPhone scores Medium. Every figure here comes from a trailing 30-day window of eBay US sold listings and is dated on the page.
Describe to the grade the market already uses, because buyers on this page are shopping condition language. The best-selling listings state a grade plainly, Good, Very Good or Excellent, alongside storage, model number and carrier status. Check IMEI status before listing: blacklisted and activation-locked handsets are a common cause of returns and cases, and the question comes up often enough in search that buyers are clearly wary. State battery health, unlock status and any screen marks explicitly rather than relying on photographs.
Flagship and near-flagship stock at mid storage carries this page. The top sold listings are Samsung Galaxy S22, S21, S22+, S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra at 128GB to 512GB, plus iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all of them are unlocked. Higher storage lifts price but does not appear to lift turnover much, and the S23 Ultra appears at both 256GB and 512GB in the same window. Older flagships at mid storage clear faster than current flagships at maximum storage.
On this page's data, refurbished is not a niche within the category, it is most of it. Every one of the top twelve sold listings is graded pre-owned stock rather than new, and the sellers clearing the most volume are refurbishers describing to a consistent grade. Buyers search actively for whether refurbished stock is trustworthy, so a precise, honest grade and a clear returns position is doing more work here than it would in most categories.