Used phones with TikTok installed are being listed on eBay for thousands of dollars. And it looks like some people might be buying it. Despite US president Donald Trump signing an executive order on Monday, delaying a potential ban on the social media app for 75 days, TikTok remains absent from all US app stores—with Apple and Google giving it away. it is not given whether it will return. That means if you’re in America and you delete the app or lose your phone, you’re locked out, with no way to re-download it. For content creators, brand marketers, and social media managers, that can spell disaster. And an expensive one at that.Opportunistic eBayers have taken the chance to cash in on this misfortune. A quick search for “TikTok phone” returns over 9,000 listings of used smartphones from Apple and Samsung, all with the TikTok app installed. This can be done by the seller signing out of the iCloud or Google account associated with the device instead of swiping the phone back to factory settings. Any buyer should then be careful not to sync to an existing cloud backup, lest they lose the apps they have paid so much for. but it’s hard to believe that anyone actually thought the phone would ever sell—and there’s no sign that they have. There are many others listed in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, but whether anyone will actually buy it at this price seems unlikely. What can be said is that, even if the price goes up, there is interest. The phone is selling, but for exactly how much is harder to confirm. Select the “sold” filter in the eBay search and there are many sales that appear to be completed, but they all have a “best offer received” note attached. has been relisted shortly after, suggesting a successful sale, with only those who sit close to the market value for secondhand phones looking to have actually sold. the ones currently running also show more expensive prices than initial searches suggest. The true impact of TikTok’s premium is unclear, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. The results for the search term TikTok phone increased by more than 2,000 items at the time of writing this article – which is very fast due to the fact that the app can return to the app store at any time. A search for TikTok in one of the app stores was met with a statement from Google and Apple citing legal requirements because the app is not available in the store. This is despite Trump’s executive order clearly instructing the Justice Department to “take no action to enforce the Act or impose penalties on any entity for failure to comply with the Act.” like any deal Trump cut is temporary — but the exiles aren’t done without options. This week, thousands of users flocked to another Chinese-owned social media platform, RedNote, leaving the app scrambling to hire a British moderator. introduced a variety of familiar new features and even offered a huge influence of up to $5,000 to join the platform.
