I changed cell phone carriers recently. What do I do with my old phones? The old carrier store won’t buy them back. I can’t imagine a lucrative deal at a pawn shop. So what?
I know there are some charities, particularly shelters for abused women, who take them as donations. In the US, even an inactive cell phone can be used to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency.
If you’re interested in donating them to charity, you can contact a local battered spouses organization. Many of them will give the phones confidentially to a spouse in an abusive relationship so that they can call for help if the need arises before they are able/willing to leave the relationship. Of course they will provide the celluar phone service. Other groups may provide similar services such as to isolated elderly people etc.
Sorry, Lsura and I most have been posting at the same time 
Here’s a place that takes any phone (w/charger) and provides them to battered or stalked women who can use them to call 9-1-1.
You could sell them on ebay. Pre paid cellular plans let you use just about any phone, so people buy used phones for that.
As a sidenote, I read of a company in Japan that makes a living recyling the tiny amount of gold inside old phones. Apparently, Japan has a huge stockpile of old cell phones - some of which were obsolete even before making it to shops - so there’s money to be made extracting the itsy bit of gold on their circuit boards.
My old cellphone is not reliable enough to donate it for use as a cell phone.
Our local Catholic school takes them as donations- they must be selling them for salvage.
Put it up for sale on ebay??
Well if you have kids or something you could always put it on a pay as you go type plan where you buy those cards with minutes on them. It’s a good thing to have for an emergency phone. Or you can just smash it and take out all your anger for all the times it didn’t work or dropped a call
Give it to someone who would like to be able to call 911 from anywhere.
Most of them have codes or key cards you must input so you can’t use them if they are used.
I found that out since I work for thrift shops & people donate them. People don’t buy them, even priced
for $7-10 US. I don’t know how they womens’ centers handle the card/key code issue.
They simply call the cell phone company or the manufacturer of the cell phone and get the codes/key cards from them. The cell phone company I work for currently has a push on to collect their old phones for use by charities and the like, and I imagine that the other companies have something similar going on. Its good publicity for them, and a tax write-off as well.
Does anyone have a website for donating used phones to the elderly?
I held on to an old one, and it came in very handy when my new one was stolen. The only place I had several phone numbers was on that old one. Bad planning, but saved my ass.