Unclaimed Baggage in Alabama has exclusive deals with airlines to buy lost luggage. They resell about a third of what's inside, from a $64,000 Rolex to live rattlesnakes, at 20-80% below retail. Only 0.3% of airline baggage actually stays unclaimed.
You wouldn't believe it. I mean, you know, a suit of armor, a $64,000 Rolex watch that was like incredibly rare, tons of really expensive jewelry, like $20,000 pieces of jewelry that people just never claim.
Hey Zach, welcome back.
How you doing?
Good. So this week you have a profile of a company that has created a monopoly around selling people's lost luggage. How'd you hear about this and tell us a little bit about it?
So our founder Sam actually came across this company. He likes to research weird business models and kind of boring companies that are doing interesting things in the middle of nowhere. This tiny company out in Scottsboro, Alabama called Unclaimed Baggage. They kind of have a monopoly on this market where they have strict— they've stricken exclusive deals with almost every major airline in America, and they essentially buy baggage that the airlines aren't able to find the owner of, and they sell this baggage in a massive 40,000-square-foot warehouse. And yeah, you find some pretty weird stuff there.
You find some pretty weird stuff. You've got like pages and pages. Now they have like an online presence so people can actually go online and buy all kinds of things that people have lost. Unbeknownst to them, their luggage is being sold out from under them and they probably don't even know that it is, it's out there still, which is probably, yeah. And it ticks off a lot of people.
But to be fair though, the So the airlines do try really hard to reconnect the luggage with their owners. They have all these crazy matching software systems they use. And in the end, only a tiny fraction of baggage isn't actually able to be reconnected with its owner. I think it's something like 0.3% of all luggage in America. But, you know, understandably, you know, it is kind of a contentious thing too, because they're, They're selling really personal items from people's suitcases and they have a process when a suitcase comes into the store. They have a team that kind of goes through it and filters out anything that might be inappropriate or that they can't resell. So they actually only end up selling about a third of the stuff that is in these suitcases. The other two-thirds either get thrown out or donated.
So don't tell us everything, but give us a little teaser of some of the crazy things that that this company has found and sold.
Yeah, you wouldn't believe it. I mean, you know, a suit of armor, a $64,000 Rolex watch that was like incredibly rare, tons of really expensive jewelry, like $20,000 pieces of jewelry that people just never claim, vacuum-packed frogs in a suitcase, the original, The original prop of the character Hoggle from the movie Labyrinth, which is like this weird goblin character or whatever it is. Probably get slammed in the comments for getting that wrong. Live rattlesnakes in a duffel bag. All kinds of very weird stuff that we'll get into in the article.
Very cool. Now there's also weapons and all kinds of stuff like NASA products.
Yeah, so yeah, they not only sell They don't sell suitcases, but they sell, they buy unclaimed cargo, which can be anything like freight cargo, can be government property, and you know, stuff, also stuff that's left in the overhead bins, musical instruments, skis, surfboards, really anything that people fly with is fair game for them to sell.
And is the stuff reasonably priced? And you looked online, to get a sense of what they're selling and what they sell it at?
Yeah, I think, you know, some customers have claimed that things are anywhere from like 20 to 80% below what you would pay somewhere else. And it seemed, you know, from glancing at their online inventory, it seems their prices are pretty fair. I think the real value add is you just, you find one-off things that are probably pretty hard to find sometimes. I know that that $64,000 watch I mentioned, you know, I think some gentleman actually came in the store and ended up getting it for $35,000. So he got a pretty sweet deal on that watch. It was probably a, you know, it's a rare Rolex that he probably couldn't find anywhere else. So it's kind of like eBay in the sense that you get these really strange, unique one-off items that you can't really sell anywhere else. It's kind of like kind of like the world's best, you know, pawn shop or something without the pawning.
That's great. Well, it's another little subculture that you dive into that I can't wait to share with the readers. So make sure you guys open it up on Sunday. Thanks for joining us, Zach.
Yep, see you guys on Sunday.
