I Bought a Broken iPhone 16 to Flip for Profit

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:04]I just bought this broken iPhone 16 from eBay. This is the listing. I paid $329 for the device. It has cracks on the front and the back. That is the back of the phone right there. Those are on the front. Take a look at sold items on eBay. A fully functional iPhone 16 sells for around $750.

[00:00:28]This one just sold for $727.

[00:00:31]And this one just sold for $770.

[00:00:35]Of these sales were on May 11th. It is currently May 12th. So, these are all recent sales. I want to try fixing this broken iPhone 16 and reselling it for a profit. So, you might be asking yourself, does he know how to repair a broken iPhone 16? No.

[00:00:58]Quite frankly, I have a tendency to break things. This is a bad idea. But I got a quote from a professional repair person, and this will not be a profitable endeavor unless I could figure out how to do this repair myself. All right, so here's the plan.

[00:01:14]Step one, I need to test the phone. The listing said that all that is damaged on this is the back glass and the screen, and that everything else is fully functional. But I do still want to double check everything and make sure everything's functional because I can't sell this phone for the fully functional price if it's not fully functional. So, I got to work. Back glass was broken.

[00:01:37]Screen was broken. I knew that. Despite the cracks, the screen was still working without any issues. I'll explain why that matters a bit later. The battery was in great shape at 90% battery health. And all three of the cameras seemed to work, including the telephoto and ultra wide lens. And so did Face ID.

[00:01:57]So far so good. Final step was just testing the microphone and speaker. You should subscribe to the channel so that I can reach my goal of hitting 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

[00:02:12]Huh, seems to work. Next, I needed to buy the replacement parts. First things first, I needed a replacement screen.

[00:02:21]The part supplier had three different options for the screen replacement. They had an aftermarket LCD screen for only $36, an aftermarket OLED display for $70, and an original Apple screen for $248.

[00:02:38]While I'd love to have been able to go with the original Apple screen, that would ruin any shot of this being profitable at all. And the phone originally came from Apple with an OLED display. So, while the $36 LCD option is very tempting, I just didn't want to do the next owner dirty like that. I decided to go with the aftermarket OLED option for $70. Next, I needed a replacement back glass, which thankfully they had for only $21. The specific one that I bought is an original Apple back glass pulled from another iPhone 16. I also bought a replacement wireless charger and flashlight for $45. I wasn't sure if that would be necessary because in the tutorial I watched on YouTube, the guy just transferred the original wireless charger and flashlight over, but that did not look like a super simple process. And I figured if there's anything I'm going to damage in this process, it was probably going to be that wireless charger. So, I decided to buy one just in case. With the parts ordered, it was time to make a trip to the parts store. I took this video of my Tesla so that people can stop commenting telling me that I forgot to add fuel costs and my profit breakdowns at the end of the videos. Then I made my way to the part store, which was very cool.

[00:03:57]They had all of these empty iPhone boxes, including a purple iPhone 16 box that perfectly matches the phone I'm going to be reselling. I don't know why, but people always pay extra when the phone comes with an original box. It was only $2.97, so I decided to add that to the order as well. All right, so I got the parts.

[00:04:19]Let's do a parts haul. This is the screen. It is an aftermarket soft OLED screen. So, this is what the screen looks like.

[00:04:32]It is an aftermarket soft OLED screen.

[00:04:37]This is what the aftermarket back glass looks like. There is an Apple logo under there. I got one more thing which I may or may not need, which is the wireless NFC charging flex with the flashlight flex for iPhone 16.

[00:04:54]This goes on the back glass. And I also got this box that I will add to the eBay listing that hopefully will make us a little bit of extra money. Heading back to the office now. As always, I will be breaking down all the costs associated with this and calculating the profit at the end of the video. All right, it is the moment of truth. My ability to generate a profit from this iPhone 16 rests entirely on the success or the failure of this repair. I have the tools, the phone, and the parts.

[00:05:39]It's time to give this a try. I decided to start with the back glass. Like any good DIY project, I started it by watching someone else do it on YouTube.

[00:05:48]The video said to start by using a heat gun, but I've broken a lot of things in the past using my heat gun. So, I decided to use my heat mat instead.

[00:05:59]The first step was to pry underneath the back glass. I used this little metal ninja star thing to get underneath the glass, which worked surprisingly well.

[00:06:09]Then, I slowly worked my way around the device, adding more heat and alcohol to the device as I worked my way around. So far so good. Once I'd loosened up the back glass a little bit, I was able to switch to using a guitar pick just like the guy in the video. Once again, working my way around the back glass to loosen the adhesive.

[00:06:40]And slowly but surely, I was in. Then I just removed a couple small screws, disconnected the wireless charger, and off came the back glass.

[00:06:54]All right, so far so good. I have removed the back glass from the phone.

[00:07:00]So, we are inside the phone. So far, this is going good. Everything's smooth, but this was kind of the easy part.

[00:07:08]Next, I had to transfer the wireless charger over from the broken back glass to the brand new replacement back glass.

[00:07:15]It was super important that I didn't damage anything here because successfully transferring this over would let me return the $45 replacement wireless charger that I'd already purchased. I removed the screw covering the flashlight, put the back glass on my heat mat, and slowly started prying up on the cable, adding alcohol whenever I needed it.

[00:07:44]These cables are super easy to tear, so I had to be really careful as I worked my way through.

[00:07:51]And slowly but surely, I worked my way through the entire flashlight cable. But it was time for the hard part, the wireless charger. This part was a lot more stressful and required maximum focus as you can see. So, it's not pretty, but I think I removed it successfully.

[00:08:10]Now, I have to take this and install it on the new back glass. So, I reinstalled the charging coil on the new glass, plugged the back glass back into the device, and gave it a test. The wireless charger worked and so did the flashlight.

[00:08:31]The final step was replacing the damaged screen. Removing the screen was pretty much the same as the back glass. The only difference is I needed to be really careful not to damage the original display when removing it because of the LCD buyback program. What's the LCD buyback program? The LCD buyback program is a program part suppliers offer where they will buy back the original Apple screen from you. In this case, they would actually give me $70 back for the original screen. But they only do that if the cracked screen that you send in is fully functional. So, it was super important that I didn't break it when removing it, which thankfully I didn't.

[00:09:16]All that was left to do was transfer the proximity sensor over to the new screen, install a new waterproof adhesive, close up the device, and I was done. I am very pleased to share that the repair was successful. Screen fully functional.

[00:09:33]Back glass, I mean, it's a glass, so it's there. It's on. Flashlight fully functional.

[00:09:42]uh and a wireless charger fully functional. So, we've gone from a very broken iPhone 16 to a fully functional and ready to flip for profit iPhone 16.

[00:09:56]It's time to list this on eBay. With the device repaired, it was time to list it on eBay. I took photos of every angle of the device, making sure to be super transparent about the condition of the phone. I also made it super clear that the device had previously been repaired because honesty is the best policy.

[00:10:17]I set the price at $679, which based on comparables at the time, I thought was a pretty fair price. All right, so it has been a couple of weeks since I listed the phone on eBay, and I do have to admit it has been not a particularly enjoyable experience trying to sell this phone. There may have been a bit of oversight on my part in terms of how easy it would be to resell this because there are a few minor things that seem to be impacting how willing people were to buy the phone. Number one, the phone was in pretty bad condition. Uh I did replace the screen and the back glass, but the sides of the phone were just pretty beat up if you look at the eBay listing. Um not in the best shape. totally understand why people might not want a phone in that condition. Number two, the phone is an eim model and here in Canada, our phones all ship as a physical SIM model. So, I just think the fact that it didn't have a physical SIM has been freaking people out a little bit. And then finally, I do think the aftermarket screen is impacting people's willingness to buy the phone. I've sold phones with aftermarket screens before without issues, but I think the combination of the condition, the aftermarket screen, and the eSIM all made it a little bit of a less desirable buy for people on eBay. That being said, I did sell the phone. All right, so let's talk profit. The final sale price for the device was $549 Canadian, which after eBay takes their 8% fees left me with $55 Canadian that actually hit my bank account. I incurred a lot of expenses in this endeavor. The device was $330, which based on the conversion rate at the time made my total device cost in Canadian $445 Canadian. I spent $136 Canadian on parts. Thankfully, I was able to get $45 back for the wireless charger, as well as another $65 back for the original screen, thanks to the LCD buyback program, which brings the total repair cost for the iPhone 16 down to 26 Canadians. That brings my total profit for this endeavor all the way up or down to $34 Canadian.

[00:13:10]They're not all wins, guys. They're not all wins.