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Store Sells Items From Lost Luggage At Discounts

Unclaimed Baggage Center Gets A Million Visitors A Year

POSTED: 1:59 pm EDT May 7, 2008
UPDATED: 7:53 pm EDT May 7, 2008

Over 98 percent of air travelers' baggage makes it to the right destination.

Even the majority of the lost bags are returned to their owners within days.

However, those bags that are never reunited with their owner and not claimed after 90 days, end up in the land of lost luggage.

Unclaimed Baggage Center looks like a typical department store, but what makes the Scottsboro, Ala., store different is not what is rolled out onto the floor, but where it's rolled in from.

The store's racks, shelves and display cases are all loaded with the contents of lost luggage.

Related: Watch The Report

"We're the only store in the nation that buys and resells unclaimed baggage from the airlines," said Brenda Cantrell, Unclaimed Baggage Center's director of marketing.

Cantrell said nearly a million visitors come to the store every year.

One-third of what they find in lost bags is thrown out, one-third is donated and then the other third has to be laundered.

In fact, Cantrell said Unclaimed Baggage Center has one of the largest dry cleaning facilities in the state.

Merchandise is then put on the floor with a price tag of 20 to 80 percent of the manufacturer's price.

The store moves 7,000 items onto the floor each day and because all kinds of people travel, Unclaimed Baggage Center sells all kinds of products.

While the bulk of this merchandise has been used or worn, Cantrell insists it is not simply a secondhand store.

Some of the biggest ticket items found at the store are at the jewelry counter, where high-end pieces are appraised and then sold at roughly half the value.

The store had a 5.8 carat diamond solitaire that sold for $25,000.

Some of the most unusual items Unclaimed Baggage Center employees said they have found in luggage are a full suit of armor, a living rattlesnake and a guidance system for an F-16 fighter jet.

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