Boxes - do you keep them?

[LEGO Family]

My parents kept all my boxes from my childhood lego. However as most of them were christmas and birthday presents i opened them in a state of frenzy so they all looked horrible.

Anyhow i had a flood in my cellar where i kept the whole of my collection before i got out of my dark age so they were all ruined anyway.

Now i open them carefully with a sharp knife to leave them as mint as possible and store them in the bigger boxes.

I usually tend to buy two of each set i want, one to build and one for showoff.

Short reply, yes, i keep them :P

[Darth Punk]

Boxes are mainly important to collectors. Even if the set is used the box adds value and that applies to all toys. The older the set the rarier the box becomes due to mainly for the reasons stated above, though water damage seems also to be a big culprit. Thus a complete set with instructions and box will always have more value in the long run.

I keep some boxes, the sets that have less distribution or are unique. And a few that just have great looking art work.

[Floundie]

All my cans and boxes from my (weathered) childhood BIONICLE collection are stored safe in my attic with their corresponding sets. (Have absolutely no room to display them all.)

At the moment the majority of my purchases are LOTR and Hobbit sets, so my box collection is managable enough. I just keep most of the boxes, like books, on book cases; they look cool and that way they are still accessible. Some boxes (like the BTTF set) deserve special treatment, so I keep them where I can see them.

I've always wanted to try mounting them on the wall, maybe I'll do that at some point.

[naf]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I just pulled all of my boxes out of the closet last night. First though: man I spent a bunch of money on toys the last couple of years! Right now, I'm going to put them all in big plastic garbage bags and store them up in the attic. If they start taking up a ridiculous amount of space, I'll probably just keep the special ones, like the Imperial Flagship, and recycle the rest. Even though the boxes aren't as nice as the ones in the past with alternative models and what not, the art is still pretty neat on some of them.

I still have most of my boxes for my childhood sets. My mom is a packrat and kept everything. I'm glad she did now, I'll be keeping those forever!

[pcvando]

I try to keep every box. Initially I did not, but changed that a while ago.

I think it is just as important as the instructions, especially with older lego sets. Boxes are a window into the past. They say a lot about TLG but also the world, and how advertising works.

Also, I don't collapse my boxes. I like to keep them "alive" and displayed.

Constant care is a must. And then down the road, if you ever want to sell the sets again, boxes are a huge selling feature.

[LEGO Family]

I still have most of my boxes for my childhood sets. My mom is a packrat and kept everything. I'm glad she did now, I'll be keeping those forever!

You definately should . :)

I mostly think that people refers to "us" who collect the whole package are thinking of the value as in dollars later on in life. Personnaly i couldnt care less, and not in any way rich.

Its more about that when i decide to put together sets from the past, i like to display them with both instructions and the set box.

I usually change my displays in the cabinets i have in my bedroom every half year depending on my mood.

Sometimes its all MOC´s in there, at other times its all old and new sets.

As mentioned above i put smaller boxes into bigger boxes so they wont take up that much space.

And as you do it, i have learned to put them into plastic bags, to keep them safe. :)

[TheLegoDr]

I keep the boxes, but mostly for the artwork. I have little interest in reselling, but it is nice to have the original box if I were to resell some sets.

I slit the tape on both ends and flatten all of the boxes. They then stack on their side really easily in the corner behind other heavier object so they really only take up about a 3x1 square foot space. Not too shabby.

Although I did recently start recycling some boxes since I didn't particularly care for the art on them. But otherwise I have all of the boxes from fall of 2010 when I came out of the Dark Ages...

[Orange Leader]

I only have the Green Grocer box and a damaged Battle of Hoth 7666 box. There is no point for me except for recycling, they take up too much space.

[Hrw-Amen]

I did start to keep all the bioxes, but I just did not have enough space for them even in the attic. I only have a small one bedroom place so very little storage space. In the end I had to recycle them as we were just getting overwhelmed. Having said that I do still have the Lotr & Hobbit ones mainly as most of these have not been built up yet, but also the ones that have been I have taken apart and put back into the boxes and then put them in the attic, but that is probably all i will keep.

[Virani]

Since I'm not planning on selling any of my sets, I usually don't keep the boxes. I collect Lego, not boxes. If I were to collect every box of every set, I would have had even less space for displaying my beloved sets.

But sometimes I do keep the box, if I know it could be possible I would sell the set. Like I did with the 41999 Crawler, I really wanted to build the set, but had little interest in keeping the set. So when I sold the set I was happy i had held on to the box.

So I think it depends on what you are going to do with the sets you buy.

Ps. I actually do keep some boxes, but that's only because they haven't been build yet..

[iamwhoiam]

I used to keep boxes but then I realized that eventually I would run out of room and if I ever decided to re-sell a set I would just sell it without the box. So now I don't keep my boxes.

[TheLazyChicken]

I keep all the boxes but I have thrown some away before.

[racedees]

I only keep the boxes of the flagships.

[bricklayer]

I view the box as part of the set itself. So yes, I keep the box.

[BrickG]

I used to but they started taking up too much room. Plus it's a useless practice.

[zux]

Not a single box has gone from me, even the ones from before the dark age.

[Modulex Guy]

I keep some boxes. The only ones I keep are the ones that are able to fold flat. The boxes that you poke your thumb on the side and rip it open, I toss those, the ones that are taped closed, I cut the tape, fold them flat and put them away. When they are flat they take up almost no space at all.

[Lego Otaku]

I've recycled a lot of empty boxes from the last few years except for the really big boxes (people would lynch me if I recycled a nice condition 10179 box). I did get few double takes when they see me carrying easily over 50 pounds worth of empty Prince of Persia boxes which I parted for Bricklink after finding huge loads of them on sale dirt cheap. POP was a flop and were deeply discounted at places like Target.

Boxes from '70s and 80's I have nearly all of them though. They were flattened (not very well for some due to gatefold design) but they were kept because of many alternate building design pictures that modern boxes are missing.

[Maniac4Legos]

At most times, I do not keep LEGO boxes. They do not mean much to me after opening and building the set inside. They also crowd up space in my room, and I'm already in need of cleaning out other things! However I do keep new ones around for set review purposes, and after recording I discard them.

However, there are several exceptions to my box-keeping rule. Most of these exceptions are not boxes.

Bionicle Canisters have been fun to collect ever since 2001. I have al my old canisters and I use them well for storing the constraction models inside. Ones that came in boxes were hard to store and often broke apart. Not all of my canister-contained figures are built, and I hope to rebuild them all for easier storing. Hero Factory ones and Knight's Kingdom II ones have the same application.

Polybags have been a recent collector activity for me in my love of LEGO. For some reason, I cannot seem to let go of their bag packaging. Maybe it's the way they're packaged like this that gives the set a little meaning. I keep my polybags with the sets they came in, pieces and instructions all bagged up in Zip-Locks.

My Collectible Minifigures statred out with throwing away the packages. I decided around Series 7 that I would keep one of each series package. Then I realized each one has a code corresponding to the figure (bump codes). So instead, I kept all of the minifigure packages from there onward. Unfortunately I lost many coded packages and it has an almost taste of nostalgia now in not having the earlier series packages like Series 1. They do not contain the minifigure parts, because those figures are stored elsewhere. My Brick Warrior packages I have kept them all because for now they serve as a convenient way for storing the parts.

Only a few boxes from sets have I kept to contain parts. The Power Functions Motor set 8293 and the Switch Tracks set 7895 are both used as temporary places to store the more technical side of my LEGO collection.

I keep the boxes for LEGO DVDs, even when they include minifigures, to keep the figures intact and I know where they are. it also makes me think the DVDs stay intact and are in a noticeable spot.

When I get small Creator packs, I keep those cases, just as I have with Xalax-type Racers and the disc-throwing figures from Technic. sometimes the're useful for quick storages of random parts. Same goes with 5477 "LEGO Classic House Building", I think it's called, according to it's original price label.

I forgot, I also have the set box for The Tower of Toa from Bionicle. I found this set this past summer for $25 in a small pharmacy store, and I was very happy with the price and deal. All the parts and instructions were included. entirely intact. I don't know how much longer I will keep the box. I haven't been sure, especially for one of my greatest purchases of 2013 for its rarity and deal.

[Im a brickmaster.]

I used to keep all the boxes from my sets when I was a little. To save room my mom would cut out the sides and staple the two back sides to gather. I still have most of them tucked away in a cabinet. Now days if its a really cool set, with a really nice box I do save it, but other the that I usually chuck em'.

[arc]

I only keep boxes from specific sets, like the bttf and architecture type boxes. Other than that, I'll only keep the box if the set is special to me. (I have the box from 7477 because it's one of my favorite sets)

[webcrawler2050]

I do, and all the packaging to go with it.

[Godtshep]

My son keeps most of his boxes-and even polybags-and sticks them on his bedroom wall.

[gunm]

I toss. Moving soon and don't have enough room. :(

[Aaron]

I don't keep boxes or instructions, since the only times I ever buy sets are for parts fodder. Those things are useless to me, and I never understood why people want them when they're buying used sets, though I do understand that most of those people are collectors. The parts are all that matter to be, and in the unlikely event I'd ever want to build the sets, I could just find the instructions online. This may sound harsh, but it's always been my opinion that LEGO set collecting is for people who lack the creativity to build their own things.