17-year-old from California was given an old iPhone for free and used it to do 14 trades on Craigslist that ended with him getting a Porsche
https://supercarblondie.com/teenager-trades-iphone-14-craigslist-porsche/
Publish Date: 2026-05-29 09:40:00
Source Domain: supercarblondie.com
When this 17-year-old was given an old iPhone, he couldn’t have possibly imagined it would end with him getting a Porsche from Craigslist.
When Steven Ortiz, from Glendora, California, was given an old iPhone by a friend, he wasted no time in getting to work on a trade.
Over the next two years, he would conduct 14 trades through Craigslist.
At the end of all that was a car – a Porsche Boxster, to be exact.
Here’s how this teenager traded his way from an iPhone to a Porsche Boxster
It all started with a old phone given to him for free by a friend.
From there, he traded it in for a better cell phone, which got swapped out for an iPod Touch in turn.
At this point, he made the jump from electronics to vehicles as he went through several dirt bikes.
CraigslistTV
After the dirt bikes, he moved onto a MacBook Pro.
That MacBook Pro was traded in for a Toyota 4Runner, which then became a off-road golf kart.
Keeping up, still?
A golf kart would then go onto become a dirt bike, which became a street bike, and then a series of cars.
By the time he’d arrived at a 1975 Ford Bronco, you’d assume this would be the point at which he called it quits.
But that wasn’t the case – he traded in for a 2000 Porsche Boxster S.
In some ways, this would be seen as a downgrade.
For a start, there’s a lot of expenses that came with the car – an oil change would cost $150, and a routine check-up would set him back around $1,000.
CraigslistTV
So it’s no wonder that the Whittier Daily News reported he was considering his next trade, eying up a Cadillac Escalade.
And this was back in 2010 – it’s anyone’s guess what car he’s landed himself with all these years later.
But earning himself a reputation as a ‘bartering king’ is enough of a flex.
SB Media/Google Gemini
Craigslist’s incredible car deals
While this was a pretty exceptional case, this isn’t the first time…
