If Like Me,

you order something from Amazon,

 when it arrives you throw the box it arrived in away, well at least I do, but apparently there are a number of people in Japan that actually collect Amazon boxes,  

 one day, in 2008, Kosuke Saito, from Osaka, Japan, when, while unpacking an Amazon product, noticed the serial number “XM06” on the packaging and remembered seeing “XM08” on another Amazon box, that got him thinking that if there was an XM06 and an XM08, surely there must be an XM07 as well, 

 He wanted to know what that box was like, but it was only the beginning, because he soon discovered that Amazon boxes come in all shapes and sizes, and he was curious about all of them, and started ordering different size products in order to obtain different types of Amazon boxes,

 and eventually figured out that he had to buy specific products in order to get his hands on rarer boxes, 

for example, his prized XY36 model is very thin, and only used for articles like a cutting mat, in the 9 years since he started collecting Amazon cardboard boxes, Kosuke Saito has collected 77 different models used in Japan, some of which have been discontinued, 

on his Nifty page, Saito writes that Amazon doesn’t disclose the exact types of boxes they use, it’s a closely guarded secret, for some reason, and they don’t just ship them to collectors either, the only way to add to your collection is to order products and pray that they come in a box model that you don’t already have,

just a few of the many boxes that are out there, 

and worse yet for collectors there are the 'specials', and in addition to those, there are boxes made in collaboration with other companies that come with cartoon characters printed on them, they have the same serial numbers but different designs on them, 

but there are two downsides to receiving a box, throwing the item in it away and keeping the box, firstly there is the generation change every few years, Amazon discontinues a generation of boxes along with their range of serial numbers, which basically resets Kosuke Saito’s collection, He doesn’t throw away his discontinued models, but the change makes his efforts to complete an entire generation almost impossible, and secondly lack of space, Japanese homes are notoriously small, and having a bunch of empty cardboard boxes lying around can become a serious problem, Saito himself carefully folds some of his 77 boxes and neatly arranges them so that they take up less space, but some of them are left intact and take up entire shelve racks, when Kosuke got married, he was powerless to argue with his wife, She told him “Do not bring the cardboard boxes into the new house,” so he had to rent a separate storage room for his prized collection, some of them had been with him for nearly a decade, well how could he throw them away?