
The company that sells lost airplane luggage - Anon84
https://thehustle.co/unclaimed-baggage-store-that-sells-lost-luggage/
======
mattlondon
I left a tablet computer behind once on a plane. Easily done - slide down in
the magazine holder etc.

I phoned the airline. They had found it. Getting it back was impossible. It
was apparently sent to Helsinki, then back to Heathrow in London. The airline
just say "we had it sent to London - ask there. We're done."

Fine, but if you go to LHR and ask where the lost property office is, you are
met by blank looks. No one knows. There are 5 4?) terminals, all are huge.
Someone says there _might_ be something air side in T3, someone else says
there _might_ be something near the car park in T5. Others appear to find the
very concept of lost property novel and confusing.

I found one place, but they only did lost property for select airlines, and
even then it is not open to the public. WTF?

It pushes me off to know that my tablet was sold off to someone despite
spending ages schlepping around LHR trying to get it, having been in contact
with the original airline and having it sent to London.

~~~
paulsutter
You needed to call the airline staff at the destinaton airport, not the
airport itself. There's a phone number for the local team for the airline.
They're not supposed to give it out, but if you ask enough different people
someone will.

~~~
dvtrn
If it’s a number “they’re not supposed to give out” how is anyone supposed to
know to call this group and not the airport directly?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I suppose it's the equivalent of getting support from Google - you have to
either know someone working in the right team, or make enough of a stink on
HN/Reddit/Twitter to have said Googlers to read it, and/or for the media to
pick it up.

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darrellsilver
This quote is fantastic:

> In 1992, Roy Hall, a 46-year-old minister, bought a royal blue Hickey-
> Freeman jacket at Unclaimed Baggage. When he took it home, he noticed the
> name “Whitey Ford” — a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Yankees — written inside
> of it. Informed of the find, Ford asked for his jacket back; Hall decided to
> keep it.

Who cares if it’s true; the minister is like, “return a lost article to its
rightful owner? Nah.”

~~~
Jedd
I've been told that without religion we'd have no morals.

~~~
e40
Yes it’s ironic, that as an atheist, I wouldn’t have done what that minister
did.

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crazygringo
I'm curious why they have their own online store [1] instead of just putting
everything up for sale on eBay. People know to shop on eBay, most people have
never heard of this store. I know eBay takes a 10% cut, but auctions result in
surprisingly high prices, and you also don't have the cost of building and
maintaining your own website.

[1]
[https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/shop](https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/pages/shop)

~~~
zenexer
I looked through the electronics category on their site, and many of the
prices were outrageous—sometimes nearly twice as much as buying an item
_new_.[0] You can’t really pull that off on eBay.

Most of their inventory appears to be comprised of clothing and accessories. I
can’t really assess pricing there, but if it’s anything like the pricing for
electronics, they’re preying on impulse buyers.

[0]: [https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/products/geforce-
gtx-1050-t...](https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/products/geforce-gtx-1050-ti)

~~~
CompuHacker
I regularly shopped at UBC in person pre-pandemic. Prices for electronics are
decided by a group called "Operations" that presumably operates out of an
adjacent building. Unmarked items are either withheld from sale for the day,
matched to a similar item on shelves, or checked on the spot with a VoIP call
to Operations or by a manager, usually by searching eBay. I think the online
store was created in response to the pandemic.

The amount of care taken to price each item depends on whether it can be
identified by brand or model. Items without either usually fall into a generic
category based on the shape, weight, and ports.

It could be considered "worth it" to dig through every shelf, bin, and table
in Electronics for some seriously capable but nondescript tech if there wasn't
a pandemic on. The online selection is limited to popular, identifiable items
at high prices.

~~~
zenexer
Thanks for the additional info!

That seems a bit odd, though. While there were undoubtedly some good deals on
electronics, the ones I saw were all on sale—which, according to their return
policy, apparently also means “all sales final.” Given that a number of those
items were high-risk, the price tags were concerning.

For example, they seem to be selling modern, high-end iPhones in the $6XX
range. That’s a bit cheaper than buying a stolen iPhone on Let Go, Craigslist,
or Facebook Marketplace where I live.

That’s incredibly high risk. At any point, the former owner of the phone may
report it lost to their carrier, and the IMEI will be blacklisted. From that
point forward, the phone is effectively a brick. It may be useful for parts,
but that’s it.

Does the former owner have the right to report it missing, especially if
they’ve been compensated? It doesn’t really matter—the point is that they can,
and they may even do so inadvertently when they go to buy a new one.

This sounds like a store I’d love to visit in person—so many obscure items
that are probably too difficult to price correctly. You’re bound to find a gem
eventually. Even if it isn’t worth the time you spend, it’s probably a lot of
fun!

But I don’t really think that business model lends itself to eBay. Yes, you
can have much wider reach and sell to more people, but your margins are going
to be lower. Is it worth it? Maybe if you’re running out of space, but the
prices they’re charging for some of the items on their website would have to
be significantly reduced if they were to sell those items on eBay.

~~~
43920
> This sounds like a store I’d love to visit in person—so many obscure items
> that are probably too difficult to price correctly. You’re bound to find a
> gem eventually. Even if it isn’t worth the time you spend, it’s probably a
> lot of fun!

Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough, but when I went there a few years
ago, it was pretty hard to find anything that was actually a good deal. The
vast majority of the store is "normal" stuff (mostly random clothing and
books) that's priced about the same as everywhere else, and even the obscure
items are surrounded by crowds of people who have already looked over
everything.

I don't doubt that if you went enough times, you might eventually find
something under-priced, but for the most part it's just a somewhat-overpriced
thrift shop (and not particularly fun, IMO).

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eatbitseveryday
How does the airline have the legal right to sell your items, and at a
possibly lower value than the contents are worth? The article says a diamond
rings and expensive watches were discovered. $3k in compensation likely seems
insufficient.

~~~
amadeuspagel
If an airline had to compensate people for the full value of their luggage, no
airline could bear the risk of transporting luggage at all.

~~~
jeroenhd
They shouldn't have to compensate if they kept better track of luggage.

Right now they have no incentive to improve themselves or prevent theft by
underpaid, overworked baggage handlers.

Every suitcase is labeled with a name and a flight. They know exactly who the
baggage belongs to, they just can't be bothered to call people who forgot a
suitcase or send people their luggage back. I don't see why we should accept
anything other than either return of the baggage or full compensation.

~~~
crazygringo
The incentive is the $3K. It works.

And no, _not_ every suitcase is labeled, that's the entire point. Luggage gets
lost when those tags get torn off, chewed up, etc. Luggage is handled by both
humans and conveyor belts, and all sorts of things can go wrong.

And how would you define "full compensation"? If your luggage is lost, you
could just lie and say it was carrying a million dollars in cash. How is
anybody going to prove what full compensation is?

Or, if you were required to declare the value of your luggage when checking
in, and you said it was a million dollars, the airline would just say nope,
not gonna take it. Too risky for us if we lose it, which we can't guarantee
because we employ fallible human beings.

Smart people work on this. The current solution really is a pretty good one,
for what's practically achievable given the price you pay for your ticket.

~~~
clnhlzmn
You would have to pay extra for baggage insurance if you claimed your bag was
worth $1M. Just like at the post office.

~~~
crazygringo
Even the US post office will not insure any package for more than $50,000, and
most packages have a maximum insurance of just $5,000.

Most companies are not interested in guaranteeing the transportation of
extreme valuables because it's not a service they can profitably provide at a
level people are willing to pay for.

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OmarShehata
The premise doesn't make sense: these bags are not "lost", they're being sold
in a specific store, why aren't the owners looking for them there?

The title is misleading but it's explained in the post, these are "unclaimed
luggage". Most likely the owner decided to take the compensation option when
it was taking too long for the airline to find it.

The article does mention a case of someone finding his own item in that store,
more by accident than by intentionally looking for it.

~~~
chrisseaton
> why aren't the owners looking for them there?

I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant
to me in order to go all the way to Alabama and root around in a warehouse
just for the off-chance of finding it.

Most people aren't flying with the sole manuscript for their novel checked in
their baggage. How much time do you think they're going to be willing to
invest in getting some old clothes back? They just claim on insurance and
forget about it.

~~~
Jedd
> I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant
> ...

Precisely what's described in TFA.

"A presidential platinum Rolex watch worth $64k (sold for $32k)"

"A 5.8-carat diamond ring appraised for $46k (sold for $23k)"

Or, more poignantly (but perhaps less factually specific) from the intro:

"A few days later, a retired mechanic named Charlie buys your grandfather’s
watch for $150 ... and ... a nurse from Florida becomes the proud new owner of
the scarf your mum knitted you for Christmas."

The first couple may be something you'd overlook if $-reimbursed by insurance,
but I could imagine circumstances where the last couple of examples would
inspire a ceaseless search.

~~~
chrisseaton
They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a
$64k watch in their checked baggage.

It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price.

> In the end, only about one-third of the items in baggage end up for sale

~~~
Jedd
I think GP was referring to people that desperately wanted their belongings
back.

I understand that a lot of business flyers would write off their underwear,
toothbrush, and gym shoes -- but I don't think GP was suggesting _those_
people should be dumpster diving in Alabamaba. (I'm in Australia, and I really
don't have any idea how inconvenient it is to get to Alabama, and to then dive
through a warehouse of bags, assuming it's even possible.)

> They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a
> $64k watch in their checked baggage. It says this in the article only a
> third of it is worth selling at any price.

Totally agree - but the point is that in some cases (npi) there clearly _were_
valuables worth the effort, at least from a naive calculation perspective.

~~~
jakemal
The kinds of people who own watches worth double most people cars most likely
have enough money to make losing it a minor inconvenience.

~~~
quickthrowman
As well as the money to pay for theft/loss insurance on their 64k platinum
Rolex Day-Date w presidential bracelet.

There are also multiples of this watch for ~$25,000 on chrono24, it’s not as
desirable like the steel rolexes are.

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mcguire
" _The bags have already been screened at the airport, but things often slip
through the cracks. Anything of an “illegal nature” (drugs, weapons, unmarked
cash) is immediately turned over to the local authorities under lock and key._
"

Relatively recently (I don't go over there often), the store has had a small
selection of firearms, I assume from lost checked luggage.

As an aside, you know those knives and such confiscated at airport security?
States sell them. There is a warehouse in Austin with a bunch of related
stuff, including collectible knives if you're interested in such things. It
also disposes of retired state office furniture and things like what the GSA
sells for the federales at gsaauctions.gov.

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timurlenk
Nitpicking: the "antique" suitcase in the picture is a very recent suitcase
made by Saddleback Leather (worth about 1400$!)

~~~
mcguire
Yeah, there are a few problems with this article. (How do you power a
hoverboard by bluetooth?)

~~~
colejohnson66
Wireless electricity?

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sonofaplum
I worked at a summer camp in NE Alabama for two summers in high school and
college. Weekend trips to Unclaimed Baggage were extremely popular excursion.
Definitely worth a stop if you are in the neighborhood.

~~~
raldi
Is there a store of the same name in Alabama?

(Edit: misread)

~~~
zenexer
No, it’s about a store in Alabama. Are you thinking of Scottsdale, Arizona?
That isn’t the location of this store.

> If you’ve ever permanently lost a checked bag, your stuff probably ended up
> for sale at a store in Scottsboro, Alabama.

Post-edit reply: again, this article is about a store in Alabama, not Arizona.

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londons_explore
Am I correct in saying these goods are still legally owned by their original
owner if ever discovered?

Meaning if I buy a rare musical instrument from this unclaimed baggage
company, I have to live with the possibility forever that someone else might
show up at my door with a sheriff and take my musical instrument because they
were the original owner?

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tshanmu
I had a positive experience at Glasgow airport, a gold/diamond ring left at
security was available to collected for a small fee. excellent experience.

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BogdanPetre
is there something similar in Europe?

~~~
kamyarg
Yes, Last year I watched a video of someone traveling from UK to Germany to
participate in an auction. It was on youtube, searching for "Germany lost
luggage auction" turn a lot of results, could not find the exact one.

Edit: found a website:
[https://www.kofferauktion24.de/](https://www.kofferauktion24.de/)

~~~
Scoundreller
> Please note!

> Cash only. EC and credit card payments are unfortunately not possible.

Wow, the amounts of cash some of the serious buyers must be arriving with!

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russfink
I am reading this on a Kindle Fire 8 that I bought there for like $25.

