The title is misleading but it's explained in the post, these are "unclaimed luggage". Most likely the owner decided to take the compensation option when it was taking too long for the airline to find it.
The article does mention a case of someone finding his own item in that store, more by accident than by intentionally looking for it.
I'd have to have something astronomically valuable or personally significant to me in order to go all the way to Alabama and root around in a warehouse just for the off-chance of finding it.
Most people aren't flying with the sole manuscript for their novel checked in their baggage. How much time do you think they're going to be willing to invest in getting some old clothes back? They just claim on insurance and forget about it.
Precisely what's described in TFA.
"A presidential platinum Rolex watch worth $64k (sold for $32k)"
"A 5.8-carat diamond ring appraised for $46k (sold for $23k)"
Or, more poignantly (but perhaps less factually specific) from the intro:
"A few days later, a retired mechanic named Charlie buys your grandfather’s watch for $150 ... and ... a nurse from Florida becomes the proud new owner of the scarf your mum knitted you for Christmas."
The first couple may be something you'd overlook if $-reimbursed by insurance, but I could imagine circumstances where the last couple of examples would inspire a ceaseless search.
It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price.
> In the end, only about one-third of the items in baggage end up for sale
I understand that a lot of business flyers would write off their underwear, toothbrush, and gym shoes -- but I don't think GP was suggesting those people should be dumpster diving in Alabamaba. (I'm in Australia, and I really don't have any idea how inconvenient it is to get to Alabama, and to then dive through a warehouse of bags, assuming it's even possible.)
> They're listing outlying extreme cases. Most people aren't travelling with a $64k watch in their checked baggage. It says this in the article only a third of it is worth selling at any price.
Totally agree - but the point is that in some cases (npi) there clearly were valuables worth the effort, at least from a naive calculation perspective.
There are also multiples of this watch for ~$25,000 on chrono24, it’s not as desirable like the steel rolexes are.
Good luck! :-)
Some people live far enough from Alabama that it's inconvenient to visit the store every couple of days to check.
The airline holds luggage for at least 3 months; then there's the time taken to ship it to Alabama, pile it in the corner, sort it, price it, and put it out. I like Scottsboro, but hanging around for months on the off chance that Granma's sweater will show up is just not going to happen.
Oh, and it's "Unclaimed Baggage".