Is Legacybox Legit?

The experience plays itself out again and again across the country. Folks start realizing its time to clean up a room or the garage, they start going through boxes and, lo and behold, a treasure stash is found of memories in photographs, videos and even traditional reel film. Whether from the 60s in miniature film cans or the 80s on VHS tapes, or even Beta gasp, memories are stuffed in boxes in nine out of ten homes, spanning generations. At some point, when they get found, someone has to make a decision. Do we keep them and, if so, do we digitize?

This is where Legacybox comes in. Yes, it is a legitimate company. In fact, it is probably one of the most recognizable companies today involved with converting old format photographs and traditional film to digital files that can then be shared online or stored on a computer. However, while all that modernization might sound very appealing, there is still a lot of work involved for a consumer. Additionally, Legacybox is not cheap. In fact, a typical family memory collection could cost a couple hundred dollars by the time one is done and the work is committed to.

The beginning stage is usually discovery and pulling everything together. While this might seem pretty quick in concept, it can be messy. Most times, photographs are stuff in no particular order. In better times they are at least kept in their original development envelope along with negatives. However, a shoebox or similar is the typical container. Other times, it’s a photo album, which presents its own challenges with stick residue or plastic damage from acids and chemical reactions on the prints. Yes, photo albums are bad. Once everything is sorted and figured out, then comes the realization that not all the items are worth keeping. Then folks have to do the inevitable filter and go through everything to decide what’s really going to be digitized.

The idea of Legacybox is that a consumer puts everything in a box, ships it to the service and gets a flash drive or CD or both with all the images in digital form, as well as the originals being returned as well. In exchange, the consumer gets a pre-paid box to ship everything in, they send it off and wait, and within a few weeks to two months it then comes back complete.

Could a person do the same on their own? Yes, digitizing photographs is extremely doable. Film and videos are another matter. The challenge with digitizing photographs, or prints, comes in the amount of time it takes to work with consumer equipment. Most units available are single load. This takes a lot of time to set up, run the software, load the print, wait for the scan, confirm it scanned right, save the image, and then remove the physical print to do the next one. Each print probably takes a few minutes, and after a few hours people get extremely bored. That doesn’t include any image correction, a service many professional firms usually provide.

On the video and film side of things, specialized machines are needed. They need to be capable of playing the film or the tape, and then projecting the image into a computer sensor that converts the image played to a digital representation and file. The lowest cost equipment is usually in the hundreds of dollars but might still be worth the trouble if one has lots of videos and film to convert. However, for a handful of videos, it’s throwing money away. However, even this method still takes hours as the film has to be played in regular speed to convert properly. And someone has to monitor it to make sure things work properly and don’t damage the film. Again, it’s a lot of commitment many folks don’t have time for.

Now, the option of a professional digital service is definitely convenient. In fact, the service is so attractive, many big box stores offer it as well, like Costco. That said, a consumer still has to go through the filtering to figure out what is actually going to get converted. That takes time, emotional travel, and patience. Once complete, including compromise with other family members if a group effort, then a final package is realized and ready to convert. Now it’s time to put it in the box and ship, right? Not quite.

Here’s where the Legacybox cost hits home.

The expense breaks down to different categories, depending on what a consumer wants to do. The current entry point is about $30 discounted from $59.99. That includes a trio of items. Yes, three, count them. The three could be a film, a video and a pack of 25 photos. Or 75 photos, i.e., three packs of 25. What you get is the processing service. You might assume you get access to them as well. Wrong. Instead, you have to pay an additional $6 to access them online. $6 to access them online ongoing as an annual fee. Or you pay $6 for a flash drive or a DVD each. And the reality is that most families are going to end up spending a lot more doing this project once and covering all the items they want to digitize. Legacybox accommodates that reality, providing price packages that range from $250 to $550, which is likely where a full family collection is going to end up. So, bottom line, a digitization is not going to be small, low-cost affair.