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Use Case: I created a custom object in a customer's environment in which I would now want to tie it as an installed package.
Essentially, a way to go backwards. Typically, you would deploy object to a target org via an unmanaged package, but if the custom objects were manually created, I would like to somehow associate that to a package. Is this possible without deleting the object and deploying it back in via an unmanaged package?
Not for a First Generation Unmanaged Package. They cannot be "partial" packages, will automatically fail installation if any component matches the target org's components, and can never be upgraded. What you can do, however, is use an Unlocked Package. Unlike First Generation Unmanaged Packages, they can overlap unpackaged components in a target org, can be "partial" packages (e.g. missing definitions to be filled in by the target org), and can be safely uninstalled or upgraded without deleting the components in the target org.
You can use the unlocked packages to achieve what you need. You will move the object to an unlocked package.
Once you create an unlocked package, install the package in the org. This installation does not deploy new metadata as what’s contained in the package is already present in the production org. But what this does is migrate the metadata from the unpackaged set to the package so that it is now part of the package in the production org.
