Over the past few years, airlines have gotten a lot better at tracking your checked bags, but a few (one-half of one percent, actually) never get back to their owners, either because they’ve gotten lost, or because the owner has never claimed them.
But that doesn’t mean they are never claimed: A company called, logically, Unclaimed Baggage, has deals with airlines and other carriers; bags that aren’t claimed after 90 days are sent there for salvage. The company, in Scottsboro, Alabama, examines the contents and reshines, refurbishes or just lists the contents for sale at its store or online; what they can’t sell, they either donate to charity or send for recycling. The sorting process takes over 32,000 hours.
And, they publish an annual booklet, The Found Report, highlighting what they do and some of the unusual things they find.
Here are some of this year’s ‘highlights’
- Freeze-dried chicken foot
- Toilet seat
- Full sheet of uncut $2 bills
- Glass eye
- Santa on a log with a pumpkin
- Medieval suit of armor
- Preserved rattlesnake in a jar of whisky
- Antique mustache curler
While those seem mostly trivial, workers at the company also found a $20,000 Rolex watch, designer dresses, high-end cameras and electronics and a “Louis Vuitton Horizon 55 Rock Climbing in Chalk Taurillon Monogram Suitcase” allegedly worth $10,000. We at TravelGumbo are curious not only what would make a suitcase worth that price, but what you would put in it!
