UnclaimedBaggage.com

One person’s lost luggage nightmare is an online shopper’s dream.

At UnclaimedBaggage.com, part of the Alabama-based Unclaimed Baggage Center, shoppers can search through scores of lost luggage from airports across the country.

From musical instruments to brand new cameras, the store purchases over 1 million lost items a year, mainly from the airlines. If, after 90 days, passengers do not claim lost luggage, the airlines officially declare the baggage unclaimed. At that point, Unclaimed Baggage can buy the items and resell them for half the manufacturer’s price.

“We have longstanding contacts at the airlines. Most of the bags we buy from them are bought sight unseen,” said Brenda Cantrell, marketing manager for Unclaimed Baggage.

“The price varies from airline to airline, some per bag, some by the pound.”

Unclaimed Baggage boasts a retail store featuring 7,000 new items per day. The online inventory, although not as extensive, is updated with 200 items daily. Although nearly 60 percent of the merchandise is clothing, Unclaimed Baggage also sells cameras, jewelry, electronics, books and luggage. Lost and unclaimed items sent from manufacturers to retailers are also on sale.

“It’s bargain shopping. Items are 50 to 80 percent the manufacturers’ price,” Cantrell said. “You just never know what’s going to be out there.”

Approximately 30 percent of received items are donated and some are thrown away.

Some of the more unique items Unclaimed Baggage has acquired over the years include a shrunken human head, a 5.8 carat solitaire diamond, a suitcase of Versace dresses, a NASA camera used on space missions and a lost shipment of Egyptian artifacts dating back to 1500 BC.

“There is a lot of curiosity about lost luggage,” Cantrell said. “It is the same curiosity associated with thrift store shopping. People are like, ‘Wow, we’re going to see all these bags that have been lost.’ It’s no different than a yard store, but our store is set up like a regular department store.”

Unclaimed Baggage also offers travelers several tips to help avoid lost luggage headaches. These include: using bags that have slide-in windows for ID cards, placing additional identification inside the bag and tying a colored ribbon on the bag to distinguish your black suitcase from the hundreds of other travelers who own the same one.

If you’re hoping to find that long-lost bag from your trip to Disney World five years ago, think again. Unclaimed Baggage, while the only company in the country that sells lost and unclaimed luggage, cannot help travelers find lost items. By the time Unclaimed Baggage acquires the unidentified luggage, the airline has exhausted all its efforts to find the rightful owner.

“Finding your lost bag is not what our business is about,” Cantrell said. “Most of the baggage that was lost in the first place was because people had outdated information on their bags, such as old addresses and telephone numbers. People also put tags on the handles of their bags, but the handle is the first thing to come off a bag.”

According to Cantrell, only two to five of every 1,000 bags are lost or unclaimed. The airline retains 98 percent of lost bags within the first 48 hours.

Founded in 1970 by Doyle and Sue Owens, Unclaimed Baggage began as a small business. However, human curiosity over the lost treasures quickly propelled the company to its size today — over a million items acquired each year and over 800,000 visitors in 1999 alone.