Grade C describes used phones with significant cosmetic wear including chips, dents, and heavy scratches. Functionality must be 100 percent unless the lot is explicitly sold as “working with declared faults.” Battery health typically runs above 75 percent.
Grade C is the input tier for refurbishers. Stock at this level is rarely viable for consumer-facing retail without rework, but it's priced well below Grade A, the wholesale baseline, and below Grade B as well, which makes it economically attractive for buyers who can replace housings, screens, and batteries at scale.
Trading Grade C requires more sophisticated grading verification because the line between “heavy cosmetic wear” and “repairable damage” is fluid. Per-unit photo manifests are standard in Grade C deals; ratio-graded lots (“90 percent Grade C, 10 percent broken”) are common but should always be discounted for the tail risk of higher BER content.
What does Grade C mean on a phone specifically? On a handset, Grade C is the tier where cosmetic condition stops mattering and function is the only promise. Expect heavy scratching across the screen and back glass, chips and dents on the frame, and visible edge wear, while the display stays crack-free and every core function still works. In line with the site grading rubric, cracked screens are usually pushed into a separate C+ sub-grade rather than sold as plain Grade C, and battery health sits around a 75 percent floor. Battery is normally listed as its own line on the spec sheet, so never assume a Grade C phone hits any particular percentage without seeing it stated.
Grade C is a repair-channel and budget-market tier, not a retail-ready one. The buyers who take Grade C in volume are refurbishers who will replace housings, screens, and batteries and re-grade the units upward, plus exporters serving price-first markets where cosmetic wear is acceptable at the right price. If your channel sells phones as-is to end users, Grade C usually needs rework first.
| Grade | Cosmetic condition | Function | iPhone battery health | Typical price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade A | Micro-scratches only, no chips or dents | 100 percent | Above 85 percent | Reference price |
| Grade B | Visible scratches, minor dents, no cracks | 100 percent | Above 80 percent | Moderate discount to A |
| Grade C | Heavy wear, chips, dents, no cracks | 100 percent unless declared | Above 75 percent | Steep discount, repair-channel pricing |
See Grade A and Grade B for the tiers above, and read the full wholesale grading guide for the working rubric and the price spreads behind each boundary.