I recently had to move one of my children into the garage so I could store my boxes in his old room.
I keep boxes if I can but it’s not the end of the world if I can’t. I was selling something on Reverb that I didn’t have a box for.
Someone messaged me to ask if I had the box (I specifically stated that I didn’t in the listing). They then informed me that they just found another listing that had the box so they wanted to get that one instead.
There was only one other listing. It was in worse condition, had 0 accessories, and cost 30% more than mine. Mine was mint had all the accessories and an aftermarket case for it. Crazy. Someone else happily bought mine shortly after.
Honestly if someone is obsessed with the box they are probably a collector or just not sure what they want (obviously it’s not 100% of the time).
Yes it’s convenient and nice. But it’s no way to know if it’s better taken care of or not. I often sell upgraded things better than when they were new with no box.
Probably about the same time everyone started getting all fung shway? With the plants and chill vibe looks, and lighting, and chamomile tea, and whoa. Nostaligia is kicking hard on all things gear and unboxing, and collectionism?
Back in the day ('80s and early '90s), packaging used to consist of huge expanded foam blocks and a minimal scrim of cardboard and tape to hold everything together.
I suspect that a move towards more recyclable packaging in the '90s followed by the global dot-com boom in the mid- to late-'90s were the major factors. Unlike the '80s, which was mostly about finance bros financializing harder, the dot-com boom relied heavily on the services of all sorts of creative folks, and many of them were paid extremely well. Nice toys for people with strong aesthetic sensibilities and relatively fat wallets deserve a good presentation and unboxing. So here we are.
Apple probably puts more engineering thought into packaging today than the average PC clone maker in the early '90s put into the whole system.
This is how a “cheap” Chinese ultrafast prime lens is sold this decade:
The presentation boxes for most of my cheap Chinese fountain pens (usually well under $50 each) are almost invariably nicer than the presentation box for my fancy Pelikan M800.
It’s very simple. Buying used electronic music instruments involves a degree of risk.
The longer an instrument has been recirculating in the secondary market, the more likely it is to be defective AND the more likely it is to lose its original packaging. One of these things does not make the other automatically true, but they’re strongly correlated.
People who complain about not having enough space for their boxes probably have too much gear. Rule of thumb: if you can’t store the box it came in, should you buy it?
That’s silly, why should someone to always have more than twice the space taken up by a home studio?
I’m not in an apartment anymore but I still don’t need to keep the boxes for everything.
Yes, some prestige items I bother to keep the box for but I rarely ever have anyone asking about the original box if I don’t already have it in the sales photo.
OK, I’ve had to rethink my view on boxes. I always kept boxes for resale/shipping as others have noted, but I live in a smallish space in Tokyo and I just can’t justify the closet space I’m giving up anymore.
My current thought is to get rid of boxes for anything with a value of say $100-150 or less, and keep only the boxes for high-end stuff. So basically, I’m ditching a bunch of Volca boxes and boxes for some cheap guitar pedals and keeping the boxes for my Strymons and SP404 and stuff like that.
I have to say I’d love it if I was in the mindset to ditch the Strymon and other boxes as well, but I just can’t do it yet.
Oh, and I’m keeping the boxes for couple of cheaper things still under warranty, just in case.
Anybody else in a smaller space employing such a strategy?
Yeah, I thought about that, but it seems for the most part the key function of the box is the styrofoam/inserts inside, and that stuff takes up a lot of space.
Beyond that it’s just collectibility and messing up the box probably diminishes that. I figure for things like Volcas or whatever, I’m ok with taking the ding on resale value if it means I can reclaim some space.
I’m just about to put up for sale some kit I bought during lockdown but haven’t had time to use, including an MC707, Digitakt and Electribe Sampler. Having the original boxes can help with selling in terms of kit being well protected and easier from a posting and packaging perspective. Can help to demonstrate that kit has been well looked after too, particularly when barely used.
Boxes are life… end of… I’ve still got boxes for transformers figures I purchased ten years ago… and for me at least when buying used gear if there’s no box or original accessories I’d better be getting a silly good price or it’s a no deal scenario…
This is the weirdest thread. If 2 people are selling the same thing, but one person has the original box and the other doesn’t, the one with the original box is obviously more desirable. I can’t believe there are 136 replies to this.
