Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

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blunderbuss
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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by blunderbuss » Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:07 am

I’m fidgety about it and keep them. The only one I don’t have is a Rat I bought “new” from GC. They didn’t have the box when I picked it up.

I’ve thought about buying another one and selling this one.
Ryan

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by Beltone » Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:03 pm

I keep the boxes but I have the room and a small pedal board, so it's not a big issue right now. I do use the stickers when there's case candy, so I guess that could affect resale value one day if I ever decide to part with one.

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by MayTheFuzzBeWithYou » Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:58 pm

In recent years I started doing this... I keep my spare parts and electronics I need for guitar-projects and diy-pedal building in them.
I also have two boxes (funnily of pedals that I don't own anymore) for my cupping classes (occupational therapist who was a masseur before).
But I don't care too much about them being valuable for resale but these are just damn good boxes! :-)

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by Jaguar018 » Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:53 pm

I keep the boxes, mainly for if/when I sell the pedal on. I seem to regularly switch out pedals every few years. It 100% makes them easier to sell because you appeal to that many more buyers.

When I buy used pedals, it’s not as important depending on the age of the pedal. I probably would not care too much about boxes for mass-produced pedals like Boss and Ibanez, but for boutique pedals where they are all precious about the boxes I’d be more into getting that too.

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by tune_link » Tue Jan 19, 2021 7:23 am

Gonna go ahead and agree with a lot of the sentiment here. I buy a lot of used pedals and I personally won't buy one specifically for the box or care a whole lot if it's missing that depending on price. A lot of people do care though and it def makes things easier to sell. I'm constantly fiddling with my pedals and switching them out for others and selling them so I tend to keep the boxes. Like someone else here said though, I have a storage closet with plenty of room for them though and I can see that being an issue if space is tight for you.

Now with all that said here are two things to keep in mind just from a buyer's perspective. First, if I'm looking at used pedals on say Reverb and two sellers are really close in price and the condition of the items is similar and one has the box and the other doesn't, I'm buying the one with the box. Second, if you're trying to sell a pedal for as much as you can and you're missing the box I will balk at seeing a used price that isn't that far below the new price - no matter the condition. If you kept it in good shape and want the most resale, keep the box. If you've been using it for years and it's beat up looking and has been priced accordingly I'm never gonna give half a shit about the box at that point.

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by øøøøøøø » Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:00 pm

Even the resale angle doesn’t persuade me too much.

Just doing the math: I pay about $2 per square foot per month in NYC rent.

If I have even one square foot of stored boxes, I’m essentially paying $24 per year to store those boxes.

If I keep one square foot of pedal boxes, it would probably only take 1-2 years before I’m paying more to keep them than I’d recover in eventual resale (unless I bought/sold pedals VERY frequently)

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by jorri » Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:18 pm

Image

Kept this one, displayed on a shelf. I like the design!

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by soggy mittens » Fri Jan 22, 2021 8:36 pm

Yes. I have boxes of boxes. The day may come that I will need a box for my boxes of boxes.

Image
If OSG has tort me anything...

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by X-Ray Spex » Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:16 am

øøøøøøø wrote:
Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:00 pm
Even the resale angle doesn’t persuade me too much.

Just doing the math: I pay about $2 per square foot per month in NYC rent.

If I have even one square foot of stored boxes, I’m essentially paying $24 per year to store those boxes.

If I keep one square foot of pedal boxes, it would probably only take 1-2 years before I’m paying more to keep them than I’d recover in eventual resale (unless I bought/sold pedals VERY frequently)
I live in a tiny apartment and I really can't justify the space they take up. Nothing is boutique or anything so the boxes are going in the recycling.
''It's not what you play, it's what you play'' - Troy Van Leeuwen

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by DIYRock » Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:07 am

I keep them in case I decide to sell later. If I buy a used pedal, I make sure that it comes in the original box.

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by tune_link » Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:33 am

jorri wrote:
Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:18 pm
Image

Kept this one, displayed on a shelf. I like the design!
That's a hell of a box. I LOVE that design.

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by cestlamort » Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:44 am

I rarely buy new pedals, but I'll keep the boxes around if I have the boxes, if only to have something to ship it in when it moves on to a new forever home.
I will however buy backups of the effects I really love (when I find 'em for cheap, as the old pedals always seem to break sometime -- looking at you, EHX), so I guess my effects pedal OCD manifests itself differently than most people's.

Not unrelated: I cut out the proofs of purchase / chucked all my Star Wars figure blister packs when I was a kid, but I did hold onto every single gun and accessory until they all were sold at a garage sale for $40 or so to fund a skateboard. (I did hold onto my comic books, because I sure as heck wasn't going to make the mistakes my father's generation did!)

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by beninma » Tue Feb 02, 2021 8:47 am

I have kept some off and on but in the last year I really said screw it and cleaned up the mess and tossed the boxes.

It's not a lot of money you're making, and it's a lot of clutter. Even if you own a house like I do it's still space you're wasting. And where do you draw the line? Do you keep the boxes for your smartphone? For your laptop? Stereo system?

I try to buy used pedals whenever I can and definitely don't care about buying the box there. I am trying to really get myself to the point I try to stop looking at them at all, buying and selling them is a distraction from improving my playing and making music. Some people get fulfillment out of buying pedals and posting "NPD!" on Reddit or something but that's not my thing. I don't really take much joy in buying stuff and immediately putting pictures of it online to show the world I have more stuff.

I also doubt any pedals I have are ever going to be seriously valuable like say an early Klon or something anyway.

I just bought a new guitar.. I was able to pay for 50% of it with proceeds of getting rid of pedals. I am way happier having the guitar. I have a few more to sell but probably won't get to 100% of the price of the new guitar.

Now there have been some cases I broke this policy.. if I got something and wasn't that sure I was going to like it I don't toss the boxes on day 1.. I'll keep them for a while. But once stuff seems to have found a home with me the boxes go.

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by Strango » Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:27 pm

I keep most of mine (I trade and sell semi-often) but storage is becoming a problem, both for pedals and for boxes. I was trying to keep non-boarded pedals in their boxes since they'd stack but for home playing, I've been doing a mix-and-match 3-5 pedals at a time kinda thing, so even that's becoming a pain. Trying to figure out a better solution for storage in general...

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Re: Do you keep your effects pedal's original boxes?

Post by marqueemoon » Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:10 pm

øøøøøøø wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 5:57 am
Usually no. Storage is at a premium for me. But your answer may be different.

A helpful question to ask is whether, if you decide to keep them, you'd be running toward something, or away from something.

If you're afraid of some vague, unknowable future consequence of ditching the boxes (reduced resale value, perhaps), you're likely running away from letting go, and the boxes themselves can become a senseless, anxiety-born encumbrance.

But if you're kind of a collector (and seeing all of the minty pedals neatly displayed with their original boxes is a source of satisfaction for you), you're running toward having the boxes, and that's a very good reason to keep.

Can’t really decide which of these people I am at any given time, but if there’s a box I keep it.

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