- How not to lose your luggage is
identification, identification, identification.
(garage door opening)
My name is Brenda Cantrell and I am the brand ambassador
here at Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama.
What is the Unclaimed Baggage Center?
Unclaimed Baggage Center is the only store in America
that buys and resells unclaimed baggage
from the airline industry.
We stock thousands of unique items daily
and sell it all at a discount.
The airlines declare a bag ultimately
lost or unclaimed after 90 days.
So don't think that the airlines sell bags to make a profit.
That's certainly not the case.
Because at the end of the day, they want a happy customer,
just like any business does.
(airplane taking off)
What is the most lost item?
I would say the most lost item
is probably electronics that are left in backseat pockets
and overhead compartments.
I'd say we get thousands and thousands and thousands
of headphones every single year.
And we donate a lot of them.
Have you ever found any government property?
We actually found an underwater camera that was used
for training for the space shuttle.
There was I think like a plaque that was on it
that said, "This camera is worth it's weight in gold.
Please return to the U.S. government."
So we did.
- [Pilot] Fasten your seat belt while seated.
- Do certain airlines have reputations for better
unclaimed baggage than others?
Hmm
(laughter)
If I really want to answer this.
Just like people that are different,
airlines many times have different types of passengers.
Some are more economically based travelers,
some are more business traveler based,
and so obviously those bags are a reflection
of the type of clientele that are on those airlines.
So, there's some vendors that we buy from,
not just airlines, that have
different reputations from others.
Some aren't as exciting to work on than others.
- [Pilot] Seat belt sign is off for now.
Feel free to move about the cabin.
- What are the strangest items you've ever found?
There's everything from things that celebrities owned
to restaurant signs, lots of crazy things there.
But we've also had three full suits of armor.
We have lots of taxidermied items when people travel, you
know, out in the Midwest or up in Canada, and they kill
an animal and they have it mounted there and shipped back.
Have you ever found anything illegal?
People travel with all kinds of things.
Sometimes that includes illegal drugs,
illegal firearms, and we are very good at
locating those items however they're
packed in the suitcase.
Sometimes it's very obvious, sometimes it's not.
But we have a very tight protocol on how
we handle those items, and then we work with
our local agencies to come and pick
those up to destroy them properly.
Everything gets destroyed.
(rustling)
(laughs)
What's in the lost luggage hall of fame?
We have a lot of really cool things that we
display here in our store.
We actually have one of the Jim Henson
puppets from the movie Labyrinth, the
character Hoggle.
And the story that was shared with me, is that
it was in this big wooden crate and
it was kind of after hours.
It was a dark, dingy warehouse, and they're
opening up this crate to see, you know,
what's today's surprise?
And there's this face looking back at them,
and it just really shocked them
and took them off guard.
So we never know what we're going to get.
(loudspeaker)
- Attention treasure hunters, would you like to
open an unclaimed suitcase in our
Unclaimed Baggage Experience?
- What is the Unclaimed Baggage Experience?
The Unclaimed Baggage Experience is something
that we started about six or seven years ago,
where every afternoon at 2:30, we invite a guest
to open an unprocessed suitcase.
Now, we've made sure there's nothing
harmful, dangerous, or embarrassing in that suitcase,
but it allows the guest to go through a very
unique, you know, few minutes of their afternoon
to see what these items were in someone else's bag.
What's better: the Unclaimed Baggage Experience or
the Jimi Hendrix Experience?
They're both euphoric.
They're both fun.
They can both provide an element of
surprise that you don't know what's going to happen next.
So, I think we can hold a candle to the Jimi Hendrix
Experience here.
- Do I get to keep it?
- Yes ma'am you sure do.
- Ahh, yay!
- Why do you think people are so interested in
other people's stuff?
I mean we live in a world of social media
where you want to know what's going on
in everybody else's lives.
To know what was in somebody's suitcase is
just another element of that.
It's really a slice of life of what's going on
in our culture, whether it's fashion trends, or
electronic trends, but even things that
are sentimental, you know, have a historical value
that come into our facility.
You can really see the picture of what's going on
in the lives of people that are traveling
all across the nation, all across the globe.