Sell your iPhone 12 for cash

Storage, carrier and wear set the number between them. The grid on this page holds every unlocked combination. For your exact one, run the phone through the quote tool.

Two different offers, and the gap is easiest to see on a phone this age. A carrier is putting a figure on your iPhone 12 as part of a deal on a newer handset. That figure is set by whichever promotion is running that month, and it usually comes back as credit against your bill rather than as money.

A Buyback is a purchase and nothing else. We buy the phone, you choose how the money arrives, and it goes out the day we finish checking it. Nothing has to be bought or signed up for. If a carrier has already quoted you, put the two side by side and compare what actually reaches you.

Here, at a carrier, at a mall kiosk, or to a stranger on a marketplace. Get our number first, then hold it against the rest. Ours takes about a minute. Nobody has to meet in a parking lot.

The iPhone 12 was the first iPhone with MagSafe. There's a ring of magnets under the back glass. A MagSafe charger clamps onto it in the same spot every night. Over five years that leaves a faint circle on the glass. The finish dulls where the puck sits.

Here's the test, and it takes ten seconds. Hold a MagSafe charger flat against the middle of the back. It should pull itself into place and stay there when you tilt the phone. Then run a fingernail across the circle you can see.

A mark your fingernail glides over is surface wear. That's cosmetic wear. It moves you along the Good to Average to Fair scale and nothing more. A mark your fingernail catches on is a chip or a crack. Any crack or chip anywhere grades the phone Faulty.

If the charger won't grab at all, somebody has been inside the back. Tell us when you get your quote. We check every iPhone 12 by hand, so we'd find it anyway. Telling us first keeps the number you accepted intact.

Faulty is a real price on this page, not a polite no. Quoting a cracked back as Good is what makes the number change at inspection.

Light wear you wouldn't notice at arm's length. Hold the phone out and look at the front and the back in daylight. If the wear only shows when you tilt it into the light, that's Good.

Wear you can see up close but can't feel is Average. Wear your fingernail catches on is Fair. Any crack or chip is Faulty, however small.

Yes. Cracked screens, chipped back glass, a nicked lens cover, all of it. Each of those grades Faulty. Faulty is a price in the grid, not a rejection. Pick it honestly and the quote holds.

No, we can't buy that one. A phone with no power can't be tested. Your data can't be cleared off it either. We won't pay for something we can't check. Send it anyway and we'll recycle it free, or mail it back to you free.

Then the phone grades Faulty, and it's the single most common surprise on this model. The iPhone 12 turned five this year. Most have been charged every night since 2020. Plenty of them do it on a warm MagSafe puck.

Check it before you pick a grade. Open Settings, tap Battery, then tap Battery Health and Charging. The line you want is Maximum Capacity.

Anything from 80 percent up leaves your grade alone. A 64GB iPhone 12 at 79 percent grades Faulty with perfect glass. That's several rows down the grid.

A service message instead of a percentage means the same thing. Grade it Faulty. We buy it either way. Quoting it right keeps your price from moving.

Now beats later, on this model especially. Apple launches a new iPhone every September. Used prices fall hardest in the weeks after.

The drawer costs you too. A battery ages while the phone sits there doing nothing. Once Maximum Capacity drops under 80 percent, the phone grades Faulty.

Yes, and the answer on this model is more useful than the usual one. We checked all ninety price squares today. AT&T and Verizon pay exactly what unlocked pays, on every one of them. T-Mobile pays less. A phone on a smaller network pays less than that.

So pick the network your iPhone 12 is locked to and stop worrying about it. An AT&T or Verizon lock costs you nothing here. Our Buyback price for a Good 128GB unlocked is $130 in cash. It goes out the day we finish checking.

No. We don't purchase devices under financial obligations. If the phone is on an installment plan or a lease, the carrier still has a claim on it. Pay the balance off and we'll quote it like any other iPhone 12.

No. Every grade here needs a clean ESN. We can't buy a phone that's blacklisted, reported lost or stolen, or carrier blocked. Same answer if it's still signed in to an Apple Account.

Signing out of iCloud is the part people forget. You can fix that one in two minutes.

Back it up first, to iCloud or a computer. Then sign out of iCloud, which switches Find My off. Erase the phone from Settings. Our Device Erasure Guides have the taps in order.

We wipe every phone to Department of Defense standards on arrival, whatever state it's in.

No. Send the phone on its own. Cables and cases don't change your price. They add packing that can press on the screen.

Brand New is the exception, because that grade means a sealed box nobody has opened.

Four ways, and you choose at the end rather than up front. A gift card is emailed to you and averages about 3 percent more than the cash figure, because the brands add a bonus on top. PayPal is instant, and PayPal takes its own 2.99 percent fee out of it. A bank transfer takes 2 to 4 days. A check takes 3 to 5.

All four leave us on the same day, which is the day your iPhone 12 finishes inspection. What differs between them is how long the money then takes to reach you.

One rule worth knowing before you pick. A phone graded Brand New is paid by PayPal only. The other three are not offered on that grade, so if you are sending a sealed iPhone 12, PayPal is the choice.