Resale value on BTO Macs only slightly better than base specs?

[Fomalhaut]

I'm selling a 2019 MBP16 and have been somewhat disappointed by the low sale prices that I'm seeing on eBay and similar online markets. I had appreciated that prices would decline due to the introduction on the new Apple Silicon MBPs, but I'm looking at *maybe* getting 40-45% of my Dec 2019 purchase price back.

One thing I've seen when following ads and sale prices is that there seems to be very little differential in price between base specs, or relatively small upgrades, and heavily upgraded / build-to-order machines.

RAM and SSD upgrades are only able to recoup a small fraction of the original upgrade cost back on resale.

I've seen 32GB machines sell for about the same as 16GB machine, or maybe a $100 more, when the original upgrade cost was US$400. It's the same story with SSDs. The 1 or 2 TB SSDs are only selling for a little bit more than some base 512GB models.

Is this typical for all Apple products, or affecting the MBPs more because they are now relatively poor value compared to M1 Macs?

 

[russell_314]

I’ve watched a YouTube video a long time ago on this subject but I can’t find it. Even before you still didn’t get the same return percentage wise for a higher spec MacBook vs base model. It was always a better bargain to buy a higher spec MacBook if you were buying used. Even when I sold my MacBook Pro years ago I didn’t get anything extra for a minor spec bump. I could’ve sold the base model for the same price because some people just want a MacBook.

Apple Silicon did hurt the price because people are dumping their used MacBooks on the market. This causes the price to go down. If someone is really interested in performance and has the money they’re probably buying Apple Silicon. The only reason someone would buy Intel is if they have a specific app that required it or they wanted to run Windows. It’s a bad time to sell an Intel MacBook. I think at this point you’re just going to have to take a loss. I wouldn’t expect the price to go up just because the nature of how used computer stuff goes down unless it’s vintage or rare

 

[zackkmac]

I've found this to be the case for a long time, which is why the only upgrade I did for my 14" base was 1TB of storage. Was also glad that my trade-in was a base 2019 16" because the values offered for the upgraded models were not much higher at all. You definitely do not typically get the upgrade costs back when trading or selling.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Resale is bad and trade in is even worse.

Doing anything BTO is financial pain on the front and back end most times.

 

[fwmireault]

I'm selling a 2019 MBP16 and have been somewhat disappointed by the low sale prices that I'm seeing on eBay and similar online markets. I had appreciated that prices would decline due to the introduction on the new Apple Silicon MBPs, but I'm looking at *maybe* getting 40-45% of my Dec 2019 purchase price back.

One thing I've seen when following ads and sale prices is that there seems to be very little differential in price between base specs, or relatively small upgrades, and heavily upgraded / build-to-order machines.

RAM and SSD upgrades are only able to recoup a small fraction of the original upgrade cost back on resale.

I've seen 32GB machines sell for about the same as 16GB machine, or maybe a $100 more, when the original upgrade cost was US$400. It's the same story with SSDs. The 1 or 2 TB SSDs are only selling for a little bit more than some base 512GB models.

Is this typical for all Apple products, or affecting the MBPs more because they are now relatively poor value compared to M1 Macs?

I’ve sold my 2019 MBP recently and it was by far the hardest sell in all the previous Apple products that I owned and sold. I had similar or better pricing than others for the exact same model and I was constantly receiving ridiculous price offers. I lowered the price several times and got a deal that is somewhat good given the circumstances.

I’ve sold many Apple products over the years, including macs, so I guess that the transition to Apple Silicon and the Osborne effect are lowering the resale value of intel macs, knowing that Apple is moving away from them.

 

[Ray2]

Many BTO machines were over-spec’d for their intended use case when ordered. In the used market, bragging rights are irrelevant and more rational decisions are the norm.

 

[ctjack]

Is this typical for all Apple products, or affecting the MBPs more because they are now relatively poor value compared to M1 Macs?

You are affected with adverse effect of M1 vs Intel, then you got discounted furthermore.
My observations based on the fact and trade-in values from Apple:
1) If you buy new product and wait when the new upgrade comes in, then you trade-in at 50.4% of the price paid. So Apple will give you for the previous model 50% of your paid price.
The same applies to upgrades. When trading-in, your $400 ram upgrade is valued as an extra +$200 over the base model value.
2) In the second hand market, discount rate is somewhat in the 20%-60% range. You could end up only returning 20% of your 400 or get lucky and get 60%. Overall the average seems to be the Apple's estimate of 50%.

Given all of that, you could have used your MBP 16 for 2 whole years and getting back 40-45% sounds like a great deal. Please also keep in mind, that when i was researching previously, trade-in prices got declined. So if you were to trade in Fall 2021, you would get 50%. Right now at Apple that could be 40%-45%(not tested) which is also reasonable.

In conclusion, you can always expect to get back 50% of all the money paid when trading-in your device, when new upgraded model is presented - that could be 1 year or 2 years.
The only thing that affected you not getting 50% is just the fact that M1 is better than Intel at the current times.

Overall I think upgrades are justified: you get to use your device for 2 years with a great comfort and lose only $200 of the $400(RAM) paid, so that is fair enough. On the other case, Apple doesn't care what type of 1tb Iphone you had - you will get the trade-in value of the cheapest model in the line - think about $1500 Pro Max and $1100 Pro max, that is when upgrade money gets totally wasted.

 

[mashoutposse]

It never makes sense to buy technology before you need it. Tech both gets cheaper and better at a rapid pace, so buying ahead to “future-proof” a purchase never makes sense.

A much better strategy is to buy what you need today and upgrade to the new model more frequently. The new base model is usually better than your 2-3 year old “future-proofed” machine, which also puts a hard cap on the resale value of the maxed-out old unit. It’ll be hard to convince someone to pay $2k for your $4500 2019 i9 when a brand new MBA M1 or MBP M1 13” can be had for hundreds less (and used ones even cheaper).

 

[Fomalhaut]

It never makes sense to buy technology before you need it. Tech both gets cheaper and better at a rapid pace, so buying ahead to “future-proof” a purchase never makes sense.

A much better strategy is to buy what you need today and upgrade to the new model more frequently. The new base model is usually better than your 2-3 year old “future-proofed” machine, which also puts a hard cap on the resale value of the maxed-out old unit. It’ll be hard to convince someone to pay $2k for your $4500 2019 i9 when a brand new MBA M1 or MBP M1 13” can be had for hundreds less (and used ones even cheaper).

Absolutely! "Future proofing" of predicted requirements is never going to as good as simply waiting for the future and getting the benefits of the latest tech. It's also difficult to do unless you have a crystal ball that knows exactly what your application and usage requirements will be years down the line.

That said, you don't want to buy a specification that is marginal for your current needs if you expect those needs to increase over the next few years. Particularly with storage, which is one of the few things that is almost guaranteed to fill up, requiring careful housekeeping if you get too little. You should only upgrade to the extent that you will realistically need to keep the machine running satisfactorily, knowing that newer machines will be better than your upgrades within a couple of years.

In my case I bought the machine I needed (32GB RAM, 1TB, 8GB GPU) at the time, and I've pretty much bought the same spec again, but on an M1 Max.

The M1 Macs have devalued the previous Intel ones because they are either a lot faster (M1 Pro/Max), or just as fast but much cheaper (M1). However, this still doesn't change the fact that the RAM and SSD upgrades are "valuable" upgrades for those (like me) who actually need them. A 32GB upgrade on an M1 Mac is just as useful as the same upgrade was on an older Intel Mac.

I think the issue is that a lot of people simply don't need the upgrades so the perceived value is less. I certainly wouldn't upgrade based purely on some idea of maintaining future resale value, because it doesn't appear to be a very good return on investment. The lesson I learned is that you should upgrade because you need it yourself, but don't expect to get much of that extra cost back when you sell

 

[Lobwedgephil]

This is true, and has always been true for the most part. That is why you buy what you need, because base models set the resell price.

 

[N9JIG]

We had an IT guy at work who always told us to wait 6 months before buying a computer because the next version is always better. Then when a new spec came out he would say to wait a couple more months to let it prove itself. If I listened to him I would never be able to buy a computer since I would always have to wait for the next great thing. Eventually one has to break out the credit card...

I used to also buy the base RAM and HDD as I could always easily upgrade that myself later for a lot less money. These days however that is not possible on most Apple devices so I always over-buy in these departments. I have trained myself to be a "3-year" guy: I get a new desktop one year, new laptop the next and new iPhone and iPad the third. I usually max out the desktop and iPhone but go base on the laptop and iPad as they are not as heavily used.

Now however, since I retired and no longer need separate computers, and due to downsizing my space needs with family moving in and having to share my office, I decided to go all in and get a totally maxed out MBP as my only computer and use my iPad as my travel device for short trips. I can take the MBP with me on longer trips and with the maxed out specs it will be more powerful than any computer I have ever owned before. I figure this to be a 5-year device for me rather then the 3 I have been doing in the past. With the huge memory and SSD I ordered it could last me even longer.

I never buy a device based on the potential resale value, I buy it for me, not the next guy. Thankfully I am in a position to invest a little extra in the Apple Tax but it is worth it to me. The only time I considered that I bought too much was years ago when I bought a maxed out G5 Mac Pro and a pair of 30-inch Cinema Displays. While I got a lot of use out of it, it was way more than I needed and I always regretted buying it instead of a new car (which would have been more practical and a bit cheaper...)

 

[ctjack]

We had an IT guy at work who always told us to wait 6 months before buying a computer because the next version is always better. Then when a new spec came out he would say to wait a couple more months to let it prove itself. If I listened to him I would never be able to buy a computer since I would always have to wait for the next great thing.

Well this is a tough one. In a hindsight, everything looks pretty much easy, knowing what happened before.
I was not a mac guy prior 2012, so can't say anything about that period.
If you were to buy MBP in 2012-2013, then you would get Retina screen, sandy bridge CPU and all the goodies of 2011 era. That was a huge year, because in 3 years, Intel managed to up the game by 200-300%, and all reviewers raved about new era of CPUs.

3 years later, one should have bought MBP 2015 - well it only got 25% faster, but the purchase could be worth it if you jump on quad core bandwagon of 15 incher.

Fast forward, you get very bad MBP years of 2016-2019. Someone got fooled by buying 2018 MBP 15 as it came with only 256GB of ssd, then year later they announced MBP 16 2019 with 512gb base.
Even then, MBP 16 2019 got outpaced by base M1 Airs one year later.
So timing is gold here, but as with a trading - nobody knows when to pull the trigger.

 

[Chevysales]

I'm selling a 2019 MBP16 and have been somewhat disappointed by the low sale prices that I'm seeing on eBay and similar online markets. I had appreciated that prices would decline due to the introduction on the new Apple Silicon MBPs, but I'm looking at *maybe* getting 40-45% of my Dec 2019 purchase price back.

One thing I've seen when following ads and sale prices is that there seems to be very little differential in price between base specs, or relatively small upgrades, and heavily upgraded / build-to-order machines.

RAM and SSD upgrades are only able to recoup a small fraction of the original upgrade cost back on resale.

I've seen 32GB machines sell for about the same as 16GB machine, or maybe a $100 more, when the original upgrade cost was US$400. It's the same story with SSDs. The 1 or 2 TB SSDs are only selling for a little bit more than some base 512GB models.

Is this typical for all Apple products, or affecting the MBPs more because they are now relatively poor value compared to M1 Macs?

It’s like customizing a car. You do it for you not for how much you will get back on it via resale. The $400 upgrades should get you $100 each give or take. I did. I sold mine privately not on eBay.

 

[Fomalhaut]

It’s like customizing a car. You do it for you not for how much you will get back on it via resale. The $400 upgrades should get you $100 each give or take. I did. I sold mine privately not on eBay.

Exactly. I think the conclusion is that you will probably get a higher percentage of your money back when you sell a base model than an upgrade version, particularly given Apple's huge RAM and SSD upgrade costs.

In my case, I definitely benefitted from 32GB RAM (my 16GB M1 Mini is nearly always has "yellow" memory pressure) and the 1TB storage (to save on constantly shuffling multi-GB video files). The GPU upgrade was "maybe useful". Even though on paper the 8GB AMD 5500M should be better than the 8-core M1 GPU, in my experience, the M1 performs better.

As for eBay sales, I've given up due to their outrageous markups - about 13-15% of your sale cost if you use PayPal. It used to be "reasonable", but now I prefer other local platforms.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Fast forward, you get very bad MBP years of 2016-2019. Someone got fooled by buying 2018 MBP 15 as it came with only 256GB of ssd, then year later they announced MBP 16 2019 with 512gb base.
Even then, MBP 16 2019 got outpaced by base M1 Airs one year later.
So timing is gold here, but as with a trading - nobody knows when to pull the trigger.

Yes....I bought a 2019 MBP16 based on "rave YouTube reviews", and later wished I had held on to my late-2013 MBP15 for another year. Of course, like trading, very few people knew when Apple Silicon Macs were going to launch, or if they would be a success. The MBP16 was a very good computer compared to others at the time (apart from the heat and fan-noise), but Apple Silicon was a major improvement for most people so the "top-dog" very quickly became just another dog in the pack.

You can't always get your timing right - you just have to make the best decision you can with the available information. I was much more cautious with my decision to buy an M1X machine, waiting for at least 2 full months of reviews and analysis and "real-world user reports" rather than overly enthusiastic YouTube videos. So far it looks like a success and I'm not expecting any tectonic-shifts in performance for a few years. Assuming the M1 Pro/Max is on an 18-24 month upgrade cycle, I'll probably look at the next upgrade in 2025/26

 

[eXan]

Agree with people here, the price delta between base and resale is the closest, so be extra careful with upgrades and only get what you really need. The "maxed out" versions are the vacuum cleaners for your cash.

 

[JPack]

It makes complete sense. The explanation is pretty simple. Think about the type of buyer considering a used computer in the first place. They’re not going to be demanding users who appreciate a high end machine. The people who need or want high end machines are buying new.

So whether you offer 16GB or 32GB, they don’t care. They can hardly use 512GB storage much less 2TB. That will negatively affect the price of your upgraded components.