A fussy gun-wielding mugger gave his loot back after a victim handed him a three-year-old flip phone.

Kevin Cook, 25, was walking in Central Park, New York, with a friend shortly after midnight on Saturday, when the two were approached by the armed man who threatened to kill them if they didn’t hand over their valuables.

Quickly obliging, Mr Cook, a gym membership salesman, handed the mugger his phone. He took one look at it then disappointedly handed it back.

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“Once he saw my phone, he looked at it like, ‘What the f**k is this?’ and gave it back to me,” Mr Cook told the New York Post.

“It’s like a three-year-old generation Windows phone. I guess he didn’t think he could get anything for it,” Cooke added. “It's kind of humorous.”

The gunman and his accomplice then fled the scene before the police could catch up to them.

The robbery is the 13th to be reported in Central Park in 2013.