How and Where I Bought Fully Functional iPhone 5 Lightning Cables for Less Than $4 Each

I’m known for being frugal. The jury is still out on that, but there is no way I’m going to pay $20 for an iPhone 5 cable. I heard nightmares about knock off iPhone 5 cables, but I had to take a chance. I just got 5 cables on eBay for $18.50. Official Apple cables would have cost me $100. I tested in car, wall plug and computer usb and it works in all scenarios. All work for both charge and sync. Build quality seems to be decent. I’ll report back in a couple of months if my experience changes. For now, you should be safe to give them a try.

Yeah, this appears to be a “how to ebay” post, but I spent enough time narrowing down all the search options that I thought I would share.

Here’s how I got my cables for less than $4 each.

1. Go to eBay.com

2. Use this exact search query: “iphone 5” usb cable

3. Set the price range to a max of $4 & Free Shipping

4. Select US Only (This step not required if you don’t mind waiting for 3 weeks to get it from China)

5. Sort by Time: Ending soonest

6. Bid on a bunch of cables for a max of $4 each

You will lose a bunch of auctions because people will pay much more for them, but you will eventually win some, just have patience.

Jon