Unclaimed BaggageBy GENEVIEVE SHAW BROWN, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — It’s the store famous the world over for selling lost luggage items. And now, after 50 years, Unclaimed Baggage has gone online.
The trip to the 50,000-square-foot Scottsboro, Alabama, store is no longer necessary. In June, the e-commerce site was launched, selling everything from designer sunglasses and headphones to iPads and heirloom watches. The company promises to maintain its “well-below” retail pricing. The items sold are an assortment of lost treasures that airlines and other travel businesses have been unable to reunite with their former owners.
In addition to the expected assortment of items — apparel, shoes, fine jewelry, musical instruments, sporting goods, electronics and entertainment — shoppers will also find several specialty categories. “Luxe Finds” features a diamond tennis bracelet. “Unusual Finds” houses gems ranging from a 2016 Chicago Cubs World Series ballcap to anti-radiation boxer briefs. And in the “Weird and Wonderful” section, there’s everything from a pole spear for spearfishing to Bavarian Lederhosen leather shorts and a trumpet.
Unclaimed Baggage is the country’s only merchant of unclaimed and lost airline baggage and its contents. Items purchased include a suit of armor, a 40-carat emerald, a Chinese dragon kite and a puppet created at Henson’s Creative Workshop.
ABC News has covered the Unclaimed Baggage store in the past. The items come to the center when an airline fails to reunite lost luggage with its owner after 90 days. Airlines sell the items to the center and they’re cleaned and sanitized.
It did happen at least once that a person who had lost luggage came to find it at the center. A man came in to buy a pair of ski boots for his wife. When he gave them to her, she thought they looked really familiar. And right there written on the boots was her maiden name as she had written it.
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