Sim card tray stuck in iPhone 3G? (pics)

Question

My current phone is a CDMA phone and I needed a GSM phone for my high school trip to France, so my father brought a cheap iPhone 3G on eBay that seemed to be in very good condition. Today the international sim card he brought came in the mail, and I'm having trouble getting the sim card tray out of this phone.
I tried using a stripped down pipe cleaner to open the sim card tray at the top, which appeared to work just fine at first.
When you push the pipe cleaner into the tiny hole, the tray only pops out this far, at the most.
After a little bit of tugging, I can get it out just a tiny bit further. This part makes me nervous, though. When I pull it this far, I hear a weird grinding sound, like two milk carton caps being rubbed together. I try not to put too much force on it after this point in fear of snapping the tray in half.
NOW I CAN LITERALLY HOLD UP THE ENTIRE PHONE JUST BY HOLDING THE TOP OF THE SIM CARD TRAY. If the rest of the iPhone was built like this stupid sim card tray, I think the tech repair industry would go out of business :/
Since I just brought a cheap phone on eBay, I doubt it's still under warranty. I usually have nothing to do with Apple, so I don't know what their repair service is like, but I do know that: 1)I don't have $300 to spend on repairing a $50 phone. and 2)There's no Apple stores within 100 miles of me (although there is a tech repair shop nearby, I never went there before and don't know what they do)
Is there anything I can do by myself to get that tray out? I really don't feel like wasting more money, but I'm very frustrated right now. I just really desperately want to get the phone working before the trip in two weeks.

Answer 1

Sorry for being a bother, but now it looks like taking it to a third party shop is my only option.
My mother heard me complaining about the phone and decided to "fix" it herself. Long story short, she snapped the tray in half and now I have half a tray in my hand and the other half stuck in the phone.
I'll see if I can coax the rest out with a pipe cleaner, as the rest of the phone seems to still be just fine. For now I'll just wait for my father to come home while I avoid eye contact with my mother for the rest of the day.
And thanks for the bit about sim card itself, but I think that much is covered already. Unlike my mother, my father knows how phones work so I don't believe the sim card would be too difficult for him once we replace the tray