Perhaps it’s our currently hectic, e-driven lifestyle that leaves us wishing for simpler days, but in the saxophone world—just as in many subcultures—the interest in mid-century and older horns is quite strong. Hence, the word “vintage” is used by sellers to generate interest in their various saxophones and saxophone-related products. Now why this interest in all things “vintage saxophone” should translate to inflated dollar values for said items is something I don’t understand. Case in point: an empty, vintage reed box.
Vintage Reed Box 1
More than a year ago I wrote It’s The Cat’s Ass, which was about a seller on eBay trying to sell a damaged, Rico brown box that once contained baritone saxophone reeds. In August 2012, when the original auction failed to sell the item, the seller increased the item price and re-listed it. Here we are 14 month later, and this same damaged, empty box is still on eBay for the same increased price of $17.99. Good luck with that.
Vintage Reed Box 2
Yesterday I saw this oddity on eBay: an empty, wooden box that once held Rico tenor reeds.
Source: marlowmusic71855 on eBay.com
I don’t know about you, but I don’ recall seeing a wooden box for Rico reeds before. This is rather cool, and admittedly rather interesting. Perhaps it sheds some light on the brown paper boxes that Rico used for years.
The seller describes this empty, vintage reed box like this:
Vintage Wood Rico Reed box, Tenor Sax
Very cool wood reed box, I don’t know how old it is, but this is the only one I’ve ever seen.
The hinge is nearly worn out, & could be repaired with fabric tape. 4-1/8″ x 3-1/8″
The rest of the pictures show this interesting bit of Rico kindling looking like this…
Source: marlowmusic71855 on eBay.com
What price is the seller asking for this empty, vintage reed box? Well it can be yours for the price of $65.00. 
Maybe if it had unused reeds in it I would spend that kind of money on the it, but $65 for an empty, wooden box? Come on now. So what that it has dovetail joints. It’s still a small, empty wooden box.
I wonder what kind of offers the seller is willing to entertain. I see he has accepted 1 offer on the box already.
My vintage reed boxes
The above wooden Rico box made me pull out my vintage reed boxes to see what I had. This is what I found in my reed drawers. As you can tell, I preferred the Rico Royal reeds more than the simple brown box variety…
I even have lots of vintage, unused reeds in these boxes. As a matter of fact, I have two brown boxes of soprano reeds (2 ½) that I bought as NOS at Northwest Music in Vancouver about 12 or so years ago. They are still sealed and everything!
The fact is, people are more than willing to take your hard-earned money from you. Hey, if you’ll give me a bazillion dollars, I’ll sell you all my vintage reed boxes, complete with all the vintage reeds in them. Because why would you want my empty boxes alone? If you do though, you can have ’em all for one low, low price of a million dollars. 
Hey, I’m not greedy. 😆
Update: Well this wooden reed box by Rico sold. It sold with the “Best Offer Accepted”, so we don’t know how much $ someone shelled out for this vintage piece of kindling.
The joints on that box are not dovetail joints they are box joints. minor differance but important box joints are a lot easer to make than dovetail joints :2cents: :blah: :beat:
Oh well… I guess my ignorance in woodworking is showing. 😳