Sold my old electronics at easily a 20% premium because I had all the box and packins. My xbox with the box, materials, and everything (all nicely cleaned) sold for more than I paid for it - inflation being what it is, that was quite nice.

So, this is poor advice.

Hey it actually helps if you ever want to resell it. Prices around the same which listing are you going to pick? The one of some reseller who has the same generic photo or the one with the complete box and even the original cable still sealed in it?

Every time I throw out a box i have to end up returning the item for some reason and then I’m screwed

You can take my phone boxes, but you'll never take my game console boxes

I sell my old electronics and I get good used prices compared to others. I think it is partially because I have the original box to sell it in.

Joke's on you, mine is filled with charging cables I've never unwrapped.

Reselling old but functional deveices in the original box

Not a fan of of just throwing things away

Yeah, I just needed mine for a warranty return on my Pixel. It also had my sim ejector in it. Plus, as someone who worked retail for a few years, I can tell you that if you need to do a return on an item, having it in the box with all the packaging looking nice and neat gets a lot of rules bent about restocking fees, receipts, warranties, etc...

Then why are so much resources wasted on such high quality boxes?

I won't even see the boxes in the store as they're in storage. They take the box out front in the store and open it for you or if you ordered online, it arrives and you open it

Stop the waste

People are selling them on my local market place. Not sure if any of them sell but they have all sorts of boxes for sale.

Hard disagree if you ever plan to sell your old phone. I always buy a used phones and I only buy it if they have the original box because it's a good way to show it's not stolen. Same goes for tools

No!

It's for me.....id upvote but..... ya know

Some of those boxes are very nice. I’ll paint them, decorate them, and use them for storage. Add some custom-cut foam inserts and they make excellent storage solutions for minis.

Actually bad advice

I definitely need it. I save it and after 3 years when I'm selling my phone for about 1/3 of the original price to someone on the internet, I can present it in pristine condition, with original packaging.

Akshully...... I use all of them to keep little treasures. That I need. For keeping. Like phone boxes.

But it's better built than the phone is.

Boxes stack better than lose phones with various different sizes and shapes of camera bumps.

There is a lot of validation in this thread.

Out of all the boxes I keep (like GPUs, PC cases, but not fridges, etc) phone boxes are so smol nowdays.
\ I also gift by phones to friends & family and when I pass things to someone I need them to be clean - the boxes just somehow (for me) add to that (like, kinda, sorta, to the clean look & feel).

Boxes of old phones from the olden days are legit collector pieces.

Also, reading other comments, I'm glad it's a controversial topic.

I keep random small things in the boxes and forget what's in them until I open them once every year or two.

I literally have all my small device boxes in a reusable tote box in a storage location at my house, and larger boxes for TVs and stuff sitting next to it.

I keep this stuff for warranty, resale, and a place to store any unused or unneeded additional items that came with the device. Maybe a cable or power brick, since I have most of my power/charging needs already solved, or documentation like receipts or included user manuals or something... Depending on what came with the device. Whether it's a cellphone box or something like a Google/nest home speaker thing or whatever.

This only serves as a reminder to go through it sometime. My SO sold her phone without me being involved (she's a strong independent person, so I'm not upset about it at all), but I know the box for the phone she sold is still in there somewhere. If I had known she was intending to sell it, I would have fetched the box for her to sell with it, and honestly that's the only part of that I'm somewhat disappointed with. Now I have to find the box and get rid of it.

Boxes for larger items like TVs are great to have on hand when moving, since I can care a bit less about what's placed in/around the TV, since I just pack it in its original box which has plenty of protection for the screen.

I may discontinue the practice in the coming years since, a few years ago, we moved into a property that we own rather than one we are renting. Once I feel established enough that we're not going anywhere, a lot of those larger boxes are headed for the shredder.

But it's such a nice box. Someone probably worked really hard on it.

I usually send my broken phone to one of those places that buys it off me, so the box totally helps ship it.

It is also where I keep the SIM card key.

It took me a few years to throw out the many boxes from building my PC. It of course made sense for a while for warranty reasons, but at some point...

I still have one C-64 and 1541 drive in their original boxes. :p

I only keep the boxes for things I intend to eventually resell, or are valuable enough that I would want to repackage it in the event of a warranty return.

Everything else is fair game for the recycle bin. We have limited space in the garage, can’t take it all up with useless crap!

Makes a really effective DIY monitor hood when you're using an old phone as an external monitor for your video camera.

I admit that's probably a use case for the few of us that can't afford good filming gear. But finding DIY solutions is fun.

I have a large box in my garage labelled 'product boxes' that's full

I've resold all my old phones (for cheap, but still). Handy for that, it is much easier to resell something with a box than without one.

Never!

You can also sell it on eBay. It’s not much, but it’s honest work.

I use mine to prop my window open because it’s an old window that doesn’t stay open on its own.

I like to keep the boxes of everything I ever bought and I hope that triggers him.

It helps remind me that it was a significant, luxury purchase and I know just how much effort went into the designer should be appreciated

Never!

The sole reason why I keep my boxes, is because some people won't buy your phone unless you also have the box with it. Otherwise they'll rightfully assume that you stole it from some random person and want to pawn it off.

I get a better deal if i resell it with his original box.

No.

I have the boxes for any electronics still in my possession. This is because very rarely can you find information from the piece/part itself, and you need the box/manual that came with it.

This post is generally bad advice. If you throw everything away, you are at the mercy of a Google search for any information you may need.

Millennial? Gen X'er here. I have the box for every piece of electronics or appliance, and I have an extremely limited amount of space. If you like to resell things when you no longer need them it really helps.

I'd have to find it first. I mean, it's probably here somewhere.

:-[

I usually use my phones until the battery has noticeably degraded, so there's no market for whatever remains. I have two phones lying on my desk as backup in case the migration to the respective new one doesn't work. It's been years since my last upgrade.

The boxes lie next to the phones. They're not even inside the box.

Not a millennial but I guess I did need to hear this

At this point I think my OG Droid box is almost a family heirloom.

Fuck, I've probably still got at least four of them.

They aren't built to last long enough to go back in the box, or is that just me disabling and destructing phones all about the place?

I threw out a box of cell phone boxes just this week at the behest of my wife. Apparently it's a quintessentially millennial thing to do...

I used mine as a door stop for my balcony door for years.

Is this the OCD support group?

I'd say keep a few boxes for second hand shipping and storing things but otherwise just toss everythting. A single phone box is fine imo but more is pointless