
The secret afterlife of lost German luggage - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/23/travel/germany-lost-luggage-auction.html
======
paulgerhardt
There’s a store like this in Alabama also profiled many times appropriately
called ”Unclaimed Baggage” and acts as a clearing house for most of the US
lost bags.

Since 9/11 and newer TSA regulations have gone into effect, as well as just
how much better we’ve gotten at tracking bags electronically, the quality and
churn at the store has kind of plummeted.

One thinks one may pick up some Ming Dynasty vase or fossilized velociraptor
eggs lost in transit (and to be sure there were good deals back in the day)
but the reality now is more like a large thrift store. We all grumble about
air travel but “lost bags” feels like something that’s gotten markedly less
common over the past 20 years.

~~~
s0rce
But you can get great deals on TSA confiscated pocket knives and corkscrews.

[https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=2341&...](https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=2341&acctid=1328)

~~~
unixhero
This simply is stealing. Thanks for the link, I'm now disgusted.

~~~
dspillett
What would you like to see happen instead?

Let people break the rule and take the items in their carry-on? (in which case
why have the rule in the first place?)

Pay people when they take the items? That is going to be an administrative faf
all because people can't read and follow rules correctly - do you want to pay
for that admin in your ticket prices?

Allow people to pay for the items to be stored until their return? They'll be
accused of profiteering there too because again the admin work will need to be
paid for, and there is a logistical problem when people don't return to the
same airport.

Just send the confiscated items to landfill?

You might argue that a lot of the security theatre around air travel places a
hindrance on the passengers and that you consider it unfair, but the rules
about carrying sharp objects are very clearly documented (at least they have
been when I fly around Europe, are the US processes less organised?) and well
known even if you don't bother to read the documentation, so having such items
taken off you if you do bring them in pockets or other carry-on luggage should
be no surprise.

~~~
nokcha
The reason that pocket knives were banned is that the 9/11 hijackers used box-
cutters to forcibly open the flimsy cockpit doors. Nowadays, the cockpit doors
of all US airplanes have been reinforced and are no longer vulnerable to this
attack, so the need for banning pocket knives so longer exists. A simple
solution would be to scrap the outdated ban on pocket knives.

~~~
Shorel
In all my international flights this year (Europe and South America) the food
was served with metallic cutlery.

I would say the rule is obsolete in the civilized world.

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allendoerfer
Deutsche Bahn, while having undergone preparations for going public like
Deutsche Post (DHL), Postbank and Deutsche Telekom, is still 100% state-owned.
The current political sentiment in Germany makes an IPO very unlikely to
happen in the forseeable future, so those operations might just continue. Just
recently a few laws passed, further integrating state and DB (soldiers
travelling for free, state money as part of climate change prevention, VAT
decrease, etc).

Edit: Writing this on a DB train and just got a christmas present. :)

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freeflight
That actually sounds like quite a fun job, figuring out ways to trace the
owner of luggage based on its contents, a bit like playing low stakes
detective. I wonder if they learned a specific trade to work there?

Fun fact: In the early 90s, there used to be a whole German TV show around the
concept of auctioning lost luggage from airports and exploring their contents,
Koffer Hoffer [0].

[0] [https://youtu.be/-qE--luAfAU](https://youtu.be/-qE--luAfAU)

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bookofjoe
U.S. Unclaimed Baggage Center website:
[https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/](https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/)

>A Place Where Lost Luggage Gets Another Shot (2014)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/business/a-place-where-
lo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/business/a-place-where-lost-luggage-
gets-another-shot.html)

>This Is a Story About Loss: On losing things, losing people, and finding God
at Unclaimed Baggage Center (2015)

[https://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9487775/unclaimed-baggage-
cen...](https://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9487775/unclaimed-baggage-center)

>The Secret Treasures of Lost Luggage Land (2016)

[https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-05-23/the-secret-
tre...](https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-05-23/the-secret-treasures-of-
lost-luggage-land)

>This store in Alabama is selling your lost luggage (2019)

[https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/watch-this-
store-i...](https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/watch-this-store-in-
alabama-is-selling-your-lost-luggage.html)

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threeseed
There's a Youtube channel where they had a competition to see who could make
the best outfit from lost British luggage. It was the same sort of auction so
maybe this is a pattern in other countries.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ortv_e-G0bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ortv_e-G0bk)

~~~
reaperducer
There are a number of auctions in the United States that auction off not only
lost airline luggage but also actual airline surplus materials.

Some are run by liquidation companies and some are run by the airlines
themselves.

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imwally
The Instagram story-esque design is an interesting take. I'm viewing this on a
desktop but I'm not sure how I feel about it. Usually I prefer scrolling but I
suppose it works well with the high-res photos.

~~~
tartoran
NYT like other media companies are expermimenting with different formats. Some
are more interactive than others. I personally am not too crazy about this one
because at least on my phone it appears as if poorly formatted and when
swiping a slide back activates to the browser back command.

When at work I noticed that I almost always avoid these types of format
especially when it take over the whole screen and have conspicuous animations.

~~~
system2
BBC does this a lot.

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mtmail
In the 90s in Germany there was a TV-show with luggage auction. The
contestants had to bid, open them, then dress up. Audience voted for the best
cat walk.

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bloak
The article fails to answer some obvious, albeit perhaps tediously technical
questions: How much do they charge people to get their property back? Do they
bother in cases in which it's unlikely the owner will be willing to pay that
amount? In what proportion of cases do they find the owner, but the owner is
unwilling to pay? Can the owner still claim the auction proceeds if they
refused to pay to get the item back? (In which case, refusing to answer the
question might be the optimal response!) How do they handle cash? (It would be
eccentric to send by post or auction bank notes, even if they're foreign bank
notes.)

~~~
rydl
Between 5 and 50 € depending on whether you'll pick it up yourself or let them
send it to you.

Also things that are apparently worth less than 15 € aren't shipped to the
central lost&found.

Source only in german:
[https://www.bahn.de/p/view/service/fundservice.shtml](https://www.bahn.de/p/view/service/fundservice.shtml)

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jiofih
Can we please, for the love of god, forbid posting non-public links to HN??

What’s the logic of linking to a page we cannot read?

~~~
mtmail
See "Are paywalls ok?" on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
You might disagree, but comments on paywall don't add anything to the
discussion of the story.

~~~
jiofih
How should I advocate for a change of policy then? I’ve been complaining about
this for a long time, it seriously detracts from the experience of using this
as a news source.

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joyjoyjoy
I would appreciate an article about "The secret afterlife of Belgium Mail"

The Belgium postal system ranks below Moldavia. It is a third world country
and the postal system is dysfunctional.

Now wonder Boris Johnson is leaving after he lived some years in Bruessels.

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blondin
took me a second to figure out that i needed to use the arrow keys. also i
read saugage at first... but very interesting story :)

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rmetzler
As a German: why does the clickbait title say this is secret?

Is this different from how other countries handle lost+found?

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PuffinBlue
Don't focus on the literal meaning of the word 'secret' too much. Secret can
be used colloquially to mean 'unseen' or less commonly 'that which is not
widely known but not technically secret'.

It's a dramatic way of saying such a thing, but that's to be expected in a
newspaper headline.

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selimthegrim
Someone needs to write a sequel to The Third Policeman but with bikes instead
of luggage

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VitoVan
I spend 3 minutes to find out this has nothing to do with German language.

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masteruvpuppetz
mirror?

~~~
adventured
[https://outline.com/EqgDw6](https://outline.com/EqgDw6)

~~~
masteruvpuppetz
thanks :)

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anonymousiam
Is the auctioneer a distant cousin of Bruce?

