Lost Baggage For Sale in Alabama

S C O T T S B O R O, Ala., Sept. 25 -- Luggage is never really lost, it’s justmisplaced.

So where is it? There’s a good chance it’s on a store shelf in northern Alabama, where the country’s largest lost-baggage retailer sells everything from pearls and diamond-studded cuff links to boxer shorts and half-used cans of shaving cream.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center, which opened in 1970 and stretches an entire city block, has an agreement with most U.S airlines to resell unclaimed luggage and its contents for half the original value.

From Gold to Cashmere

Need a 41-carat emerald? Owner Bryan Owens will sell it to youfor just $29,500 — half the appraised value, he says. A Ralph Lauren cashmere sports coat? $100. A red and yellow boogie board? A bargain at $8. How about a Palm Pilot for $125?

“I come here pretty much every week,” says Sherrie Rhoades of Huntsville, about 40 miles southwest of Scottsboro, a tiny manufacturing town near the Tennessee border. “Today I needed a nice hat for a funeral this weekend, and I found two.”

Rhoades paid $5 for her two sun hats, a common find in a storethat sells shirts for $2, jockey shorts for $1 and shampoo for 50cents a bottle.

And, yes, the clothing is washed and pressed, or drycleanedbefore it is sold, says Owens, who adds thousands of items to hisshelves daily. The supply comes not only from unclaimed passenger bags, but unclaimed air freight, and items left at airports or on airplanes.

More than a million caps, shirts and cameras are sold each year.Designer clothes, electronics and, well, luggage, are other popularsellers.

The rare finds, such as a leather Stetson hat signed “To Brent from Muhammad Ali 9/2/88,” are part of the company’s tiny museum,which includes a 1770 violin and a muppet from a Jim Henson movie.

“It’s a little bit like Christmas everyday. We get these bags that come in and we never know what we’ll find,” says Owens, who sports a gold Cartier watch reclaimed from a lost suitcase.