when I put an object in a prim's contents does it add to the land's prims?

[examining]

As in subject line, tks

[Madelaine McMasters]

Nope, objects inside a prim's contents folder have no land impact. They aren't actually rezzed, and that's the reason.

[Rolig Loon]

Maddy's right.  In fact, the things in the object's Contents aren't really there at all. The stuff you see there is a list -- think of it as something like a Table of Contents -- that the region's servers use to identify the "real" items in Linden Lab's asset servers.