Would you care if this happened?

Say you upgraded to the latest iPhone and stopped using your iPhone SE.

After a while, you noticed that the iPhone SE was gone and you realized that you might have accidentally donated it to a thrift store. When you got there, it wasn't there anymore, which may hint at someone already managed to snatch it.

The thing is, the phone still has a password on it and there were no sim card in there. So its pretty much useless until they get it to factory reset and got it to work like if it were still brand new and get it to work on their carrier.

Even if you could in theory managed to track it down with the help of the "Find my iPhone" function, would you care enough to try and get it back from the person who bought it? Or would you just let the be a lost cause?

As soon as I started using the new phone, and had gotten any info off the old phone that I needed. The old phone would go back in its box of into a drawer to use as a backup phone, or would be factory reset and sold or donated on purpose.

In my case, nothing could ever be accidentally get donated, that just does not happen in my life, never has, since I'd be the one taking donations to wherever to donate them. So once it left my home, through donation or theft, I wouldn't care as it would be useless to anyone looking to use it as a phone. But if I did care, I would report the ESN or IMEI to the carrier, and they would blacklist the number, so no one could register that phone on any carrier.