When traveling via an airport and seeing the large-scale operation of luggage movement, a question may arise: what happens to lost luggage
? This question is addressed in a 2023 article, which describes how companies like SITA
, and their WorldTracer service, work to automatically reunite passengers with their luggage.
However, despite their best efforts, around eight percent of lost luggage items cannot be traced, according to Sita’s latest numbers, and end up becoming the property of airports after a 21-day grace period. This article investigates what happens next, and how such items end up for re-sale on the market, providing astute buyers a way to obtain high-quality products at discounted prices, or perhaps a way to make money themselves.
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How does luggage become lost?
How does luggage become lost?Luggage can become lost for a number of reasons. According to research by Sita that was covered in the mentioned article, here are the top reasons for luggage going missing in the first place:
- Transfer mishandling – 46%
- Ticketing error – 16%
- Failure to load – 16%
- Airport/customs – 9%
- Arrival mishandling – 5%
- Tagging error – 5%
- Loading error – 3%
When this happens, customers are generally reimbursed for the value of the luggage contents by airlines, and travel insurance
can also help to make customers whole, where the airline cannot. However, the luggage the customer meant to bring with them remains unclaimed in an airport elsewhere, unable to be traced back to its original owner. As mentioned earlier, what follows is a grace period, where the airport gives time for such items to be claimed, after which they become the airport’s property.
What happens next?
This is when auction houses and speculators come in. In the UK, auction houses such as Greasbys purchase lost luggage in bulk from airports such as the busy London Heathrow Airport
. While airports sometimes give these proceeds to charity, the auction houses can then sell off items in lost luggage auctions, keeping the proceeds for themselves.
Public speculators can also purchase items in the same way, selling items at online marketplaces, such as Ebay or Vinted. In both cases, however, luggage cannot be opened, speculators and auction house buyers only being able to make a cursory inspection of the sealed baggage before purchase, so it is the luck of the draw whether the items inside are valuable or not.
Unclaimed Baggage – An Alabama success story
The same kind of thing happens in the US, and one such speculator was named Doyle Owens (1931–2016), whose story was covered in a CNBC article from last year, and an NPR article from 2023. In 1970, Doyle received a tip that the Trailways Bus Line company was struggling with a growing number of bags left behind by passengers, so he borrowed $300 to buy the unwanted bags, and drove a borrowed pickup truck from Scottsboro, Alabama, all the way to Washington D.C., bringing a load of luggage back.
Doyle opened the luggage, priced the contents and presented them on card tables. He then began selling the items from his own old rented house. The result was an instant success, and the Unclaimed Baggage business venture was born. Initially, Owens and his family initially ran the business from home, opening two days a week. Eventually, Doyle was able to quit his insurance job and run the business full-time.
Doyle’s son, Bryan Owens, who is now the CEO of Unclaimed Baggage, said the following about when his father quit his job:
“People were just standing outside the door and in lines,” … “His [dad’s] boss told him, ‘You gotta figure out which one of us you love the most, your insurance job or your entrepreneurial venture,’ and my dad didn’t think twice about it.”
53 years later, the Unclaimed Baggage store is one of the top tourist destinations in Alabama, with one million visitors every year. The entrepreneurial spirit shown by Doyle makes for a very American story, and the great success of the company is certainly due to its cultural charm, as well as the value offered to customers. Today, the Unclaimed Baggage store takes up a whole city block, and offers global online sales, offering items such as designer clothing, jewelry, consoles and laptops at a hefty discount.
The Unclaimed Baggage company today, and its airline partnerships
Eight years after starting the business venture, the Unclaimed Baggage company landed its first airline contract with Eastern Airlines
in 1978. Larger volumes of items, and more unusual or expensive ones, began to flow into the business. Due to the increasing success, the company was able to expand its hours of operation to six days a week. Gradually, Unclaimed Baggage formed relationships with all other domestic airlines, solidifying its position as the only dedicated lost luggage store in the US.
Doyle’s son Bryan and his wife purchased the business in 1995, beginning a remodel project that expanded the store to cover more than a city block. The site also added a café and a Museum of Found Treasures, leaning into the store’s growing reputation for being a destination for both shopping and tourism. In the same year, Unclaimed Baggage Center was featured on the Oprah show, being called one of America’s “best-kept shopping secrets”.
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Since 1995, Unclaimed Baggage has expanded to include lost items from more travel and entertainment businesses, including unclaimed cargo, which consists of items that have been lost or damaged during shipment. The store now receives thousands of unclaimed items each week, and has received numerous commendations and awards, including Alabama Retailer of the Year in 2016.
After growing so much, the company was even able to begin supporting charitable causes, with the founding of the Reclaimed for Good foundation. Through this foundation, the company has donated millions of dollars’ worth of items and profits, meeting needs around the globe.
The Apple AirTag is a great way to track missing luggage. Find out which airlines let passengers use the Apple AirTag in this article.
Photo: Unclaimed Baggage
In 2020, Unclaimed Baggage celebrated its 50th anniversary. With this, the company launched its first-ever online store, bringing the company’s unique shopping experience to treasure hunters countrywide. They had initially planned to take a 50-state tour over three months with their 1970 Chevy pickup truck, called Hugo, in the same year. They planned to take with them a collection of unusual finds acquired in the history of the company. Due to the pandemic, the tour was delayed until 2022, but did eventually happen.
In 2023, the museum offerings of the Unclaimed Baggage Centre grew to include the Found Treasures museum. As many more unique or rare items had since been found, including a centuries-old violin that may have been made by a student of Antonio Stradivari, ancient Egyptian artifacts, and a suit of armor, this museum tells the stories of items, and how they got there.
An interesting example is Hoggle, which is pictured below. This giant puppet was featured in the film Labyrinth. Finding this famous character after being lost in transit, Jim Henson gave his blessing for the museum to keep and display it.
Photo: Unclaimed Baggage
What kinds of items go missing in one year?
Also in 2023, the company published its first Unclaimed Baggage Found Report, which is pictured below, and can be found here in full. Though the report was published on April 1st of the year, it was no joke. There certainly were some humorous items found that year, however. Bryan Owens said the following about it when speaking to CNBC:
“We thought it’d be fun for us to publish an annual report that captures the most common items, the most expensive items, and the weird and the wonderful,”
Included in the findings were some very strange objects, including, but certainly not limited to:
- Two live snakes
- A fossilized fish
- A 13-foot vaulting pole
- Props from the “Saw” movie franchise
- A pair of Louis Vuitton Nike Air Force 1 sneakers worth $12,000
- A mounted ram head
- A Halloween card signed by Richard Nixon
Photo: Unclaimed Baggage
In the course of a single year, Unclaimed Baggage recovered more than two million items from airline lost property, the process of sorting alone taking an accumulative 32,830 hours. For travelers, the report makes for a good read, but it is also a reminder of the importance of tracking luggage and knowing what to do when it goes missing. To labor that point, here are the three most expensive items recovered from airline luggage, each being even more expensive than the Louis Vuitton Nike Air Force 1 sneakers:
The ten most expensive items were:
- A diamond ring (appraised at $37,050)
- A Cartier Panthère watch ($26,500)
- A Hermès Birkin 25 bag ($23,500)
Good news may be on the horizon, as recently, Apple released a new AirTag feature, which allows sharing of location information. This development may make lost baggage a thing of the past, thanks to their partnership with SITA. Read more about this development in this video.
