I don’t know about you guys, but January is always a month of cleaning, organizing and clearing out in our house. It always feels particularly good after the holidays to clear the clutter. I have had a project on my to-do list for years that I am so excited to finally be doing something about! You see, I am what you might call a bit of a memory hoarder. I have been taking thousands of pictures since I got my first 110 point and shoot camera when I was in third grade. Soon pictures weren’t just enough and when John and I got married we invested in a small Hi-8 Video camera and took hundreds of hours of video tape. We transferred some of those smaller tapes to VHS tapes and all of those videos and old home movies have been sitting in the basement (in a temperature controlled room of course) for years now. The poor kids have never seen videos of themselves when they were little since we have no way of playing back those tapes. It has been on my list to march those old tapes, one at a time, over to Costco and take advantage of their Videotape to DVD service. I had this grand plan that I was going to take a tape every time I went to shop. Well…that didn’t happen and a week or so ago John forwarded me an email that finally encouraged me to check that long awaited item off my list. Costco is closing their in-store photo service and no longer offering their video transfer service! I was in a bit of a panic and that email started me on the hunt for something similar. That’s when I found . I spent a few days reading Legacy Box reviews, really investigating how Legacy Box works and looking for Legacy Box coupons so I could make sure to get the best pricing I could as well as ensure that my precious family memories would be safe, before I placed my order.
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WHAT IS LEGACY BOX?
is a service that takes all those old photos, home videos, slides, audio recordings and films and digitizes them for you. No more boxes of old video tapes and slides, get them out of the box and converted into digital media so they can be watched on the TV or computer for everyone to enjoy!
HOW DOES LEGACY BOX WORK?
Depending on how many items you need to have turned into a digital format, you pick the size of you want to purchase. They have everything from a two-item starter legacybox kit to what they call a 40 item trunk available. Legacy Boxes are set for 10, 20 40 items etc. but no need to worry if you have more items to digitize than what they offer. You can add items on to each box easily to customize it to the size you need. Once you place your order for the size box you would like, will ship you an official “” and then you can get to work! The box ships inside a regular shipping box in a super timely manner…I had mine within the week. Be careful when you are opening the shipping box because you will re-use that box to ship your items back.
Along with your , they include a booklet with all the instructions you need, as well as your bar codes and shipping labels. What are the barcodes for you ask? The barcodes are specially generated for your particular order. You simply affix one label to each video tape so that can keep it all together and identify which items are yours.
Need to add more items to your box? No worries! has already thought of that. They include extra barcodes on the next page of the booklet…
You can see that for each additional tape etc. it is a reduced rate of $15 to add them. Once your items are all barcoded, you simply fill your and get it ready to ship back…how cool is that?
Package your back up in the original shipping box and affix your prepaid shipping label to the outlined spots on the box. Drop it at a UPS location and you are all set! Legacy Box will do the rest. Once your box arrives at headquarters, they get to work digitizing your memories onto your choice of thumb drive, the cloud, or DVD. This process says it takes roughly 6-8 weeks on their website. During the digitizing process, they provide real-time updates and lots of emails to let you know that your memories are safe and secure.
HOW MUCH DOES LEGACY BOX COST?
Depending on the number of items you need to digitize, it costs roughly $25 per item when you purchase your Legacy Box without any coupons or promotions…but in my experience it seems as though they are ALWAYS running a promotion. I purchased my Legacy Box at 50% off. In addition to the cost of the box, you will need to choose which type of digital product you want to get back. You can pick more than one option, you simply pay for it. I purchased the 40 item trunk (remember I said I was a memory hoarder? ;)) and each of my digitized items were $80. That may vary depending on the size of box you order. I decided that I wanted mine in both DVD format and on a thumb drive. It was worth it to me to pay the additional $80 to have a back up.
Along with the additional charge for your selected digital item, there is a shipping charge which varies according to the size of your box. Finally, I upgraded my return shipping for $30 to ensure extra safe handling of all of my memories…but that is just optional. In total, with a 50% off Legacy Box coupon/promotion, with all the extras, it worked out to about $17 per item for me to get them transferred. That price ends up being about $3 less than it would have cost me through Costco when all is said and done, so I consider it a killer deal because I know Costco is ALWAYS a great deal.
LEGACY BOX REVIEW
Because I am dealing with our most precious memories, I did some serious digging to make sure that they would be safe and secure. The thousands and thousands of positive five star rating reviews for Legacy Box convinced me that this was a great way to securely have our family memories converted. The process so far has been easy and seamless. I’ll be sure to update this post here when our cherished memories are returned and we have the digital copies in hand. I can’t wait! 🙂
LEGACY BOX UPDATE : MY NEW DIGITAL FILES ARE HERE!!!
They arrived!! I am SO excited! All of my memories are now safely in three different formats and easy for me to watch and enjoy.
HOW LONG DID THE LEGACY BOX PROCESS TAKE?
From the time I placed my order for my Legacybox until it arrived at my house was 4 days. Shipping was fast! I added the barcodes to my tapes ( I had 48 of them) and packaged them all back up nicely and mailed them back to Legacybox with the pre-paid UPS shipping label. As soon as my box was received by Legacybox I got an email status update letting me know it had arrived safely and had been checked in. (on February 1st)
I had initially paid for 40 tapes to be processed, but as I was adding barcodes to the tapes I realized I actually had more old media than I originally thought. Legacy Box makes it very easy to add additional items to your order by including extra barcode stickers in with your package. Once they received my box on Feb 1st and found the additional items inside, they simply sent me an email letting me know what the additional fees would be for the extra tapes, and a payment link to pay for them. Super simple!
Once everything was paid for, I received another email that let me know that all of my tapes had been entered into the system and the project was assigned a barcode that would be scanned throughout the process so I could be updated on how things were going.
Throughout the digitization process I received continuing status updates letting me know when my Legacybox had been:
-reviewed
-processed
-2 emails that my order was progressing
-an update about the digital conversion process (which is done by hand)
-2 final updates about my order
-a notification that my order had shipped back to me
-an email confirming my delivery of my Legacybox back at my home
The total process took from February 1st when my box full of tapes arrived at the Legacybox headquarters until June 6th when my box was returned to me all completed…so just about 4 months. All of your original media is returned along with your new digital media in good condition.
I ordered the DVDs and the digital copies on a thumb drive. It has been SO convenient to have them in both formats. I know that DVDs aren’t super popular any more, but I really like having both copies. We still have a DVD player and that makes it easy to watch them. It’s also great to have everything on a thumb drive so I can watch them on my computer.
It has been SO fun to have these precious memories out of the dusty closet and in a format that we can actually watch and enjoy them. The kids have been getting such a kick out of seeing themselves when they were so tiny…and so have I.
A FEW FAQS ABOUT LEGACYBOX
I’ve received a few questions that I will do my best to answer here:
- I ordered the thumb drive and DVDs. I did not opt for the cloud version of my files. It is my understanding that if you choose that option, there may be continuing yearly fees in order for LegacyBox to store your files in the cloud and for you to have continuous access to them. Legacybox has a great support team and I’m sure they would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about this option.
- FILM – if you have super 8, 8 mm films etc., they can convert it. According to the LegacyBox website: “We can convert any film format you’ve got to high-resolution digital video. Go ahead, try us. We digitize every consumer format of film created in our studios every day. That includes 8mm film, Super 8 film, 35mm film, and 16mm film. We’ve digitized film shot as far back as the 1930s and as recent as present day.” I’m not sure about the exact process for converting the film, but I’m sure one of their support team staff would be happy to explain the process.
- Do they put your tapes in order on DVD? Each tape I sent in was a 60 minute tape. They simply converted each tape to it’s own DVD. So I sent in 48 tapes and got back 48 DVDs.
What other questions do you have for me? I am happy to try and answer anything I can to help…but the LegacyBox site really does have a ton of info on it!
This has been one of the most rewarding things I have done in a while. Letting someone else organize all of these photos and videos for me felt a little nerve wracking at first sending them all off in a box, but the communication along the way was so reassuring and it was the best way to get this project off my to-do list. It has been weighing on me for years, so it is a big weight lifted! If you know someone who has a closet full of family memories just sitting, a Legacy Box would make a perfect gift too!
I hope you are feeling excited to dust off those family videos and digitize them!
Tammy
Tammy
Creative Director at Pink Peppermint Design
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Hi Tammy, I’m also Tammy spelled the same way lol thank you so much for taking time to write this out and to do the legwork. My mother was born in Germany and they were many many black-and-white photos that I’m just terrified of losing. My mother passed this past Monday and and now I need to gather some photos for the DVD that the funeral home will put together for me so legacy box is the route I feel like I can safely take now. Thank you for that.
Hi Tammy! (love that name 😉 )
I am sorry to hear about your mother’s passing. I hope that you are doing ok. It’s so neat that you have so many photos of her. I have been so impressed with legacy box. They are super communicative with where your photos/videos are, constantly sending email updates about them…letting you know when they receive them, where they are in the process, and when they are on their way back to you. It definitely gave me comfort knowing that my special memories were being well taken care of. It will be so nice to have those photos well preserved.
Have a wonderful day!
Tammy