US News

Apple Stores give Chinese buyers special access to gold iPhones

It’s an Apple gold rush!

Two months after Apple launched its latest iPhone, long lines are still forming outside the retailer’s stores as consumers, mainly Chinese, search for the coveted gold 5S model.

And Apple is even accommodating the gold diggers by letting them shop before business hours.

By the time the Upper West Side store opened at 9 a.m. Friday, all the gold iPhones were gone, leaving some fuming.

“It’s really unfair,” said Andy Nguyen, a 25-year-old IT worker from Queens who waited to buy a gold phone for his mother. “This is a retailer, not a wholesaler.”

Nguyen said he started the day at Apple’s Grand Central shop, where he saw a crowd of mostly Chinese customers waiting to get in. He said there was a similar scene at the Fifth Avenue store. By the time he arrived at the Broadway location, he was directed to the back of a long line almost entirely of Chinese shoppers.

Some of the 50 or so people waiting outside the Upper West Side store said they were buying the phones to ship to family members in China, but Nguyen said they were likely destined for resale in China where they could command twice the price.

“Give me a break. There’s a huge market,” he said. “For some reason, the Chinese love the gold color.”

At 8:10 a.m. Friday, an Apple sales associate and a security guard ushered the first group of about 20 people waiting on 67th Street to the front of the store on Broadway. Customers were let in the doors at 8:25 a.m.

Apple limited the shoppers to two phones each, and many people paid with cash and dashed out of the store to join the back of the line.

One shopper was eager to unload the 16GB phone she had bought minutes earlier for $649. Just outside the store, she offered the phone for $900 or two for $1,600.

Apple did not return a call seeking comment.