Auction of ownerless things. Lost sale. Lufthansa baggage rules

Not expensive.
So I thought it was a joke.
Reading: Lufthansa is selling off unclaimed baggage. Thought it was fake.
I dug deeper... Oh-ba-na...

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The proposed suitcases, baggage pieces and detection items are entered in order in the EU and are thus not subject to restrictions on the free movement of goods. Out of content, they were next to items of pernicious goods and wet parts are forbidden, cash, remotely.

Whether suitcases, or objects found during the journey, or returning home went lost, we don’t know. Accordingly, the condition is from quite decent to maybe less decent, from brought linen or clothes to new ones, everything is possible. If you start from yourself, point out everything that can be in the suitcase, nothing is impossible.

At suitcase auctions, however, there is not only a suitcase, but also found items, for example: Children's cars, mobile phones, photographs, video cameras, clothes, parasols, umbrellas, jewelry, unexpected packages, notebooks and much more. Please note that the items found may also be of international origin.

Her auction house Clesle

Martin Klesle - publicly commissioned and sworn auctioneer
Do you want to participate?

And here's more...
for reference:

in the capital's Domodedovo airport, about 10 thousand orphan items are found annually, or about 900 per month. Most often, these are all sorts of little things that are placed in special trays during pre-flight control. “Usually these are cell phones, glasses, belts, keys or watches,” Sergey Martirosyan, an employee of the airport press service, told NI. “Laptops, portable devices, toys are brought from the plane, and once a false jaw was brought into the unclaimed baggage compartment.”

Employees of another airport in the capital claim that any forgotten item, no matter how expensive it may be, ends up in the unclaimed baggage room. “First and foremost it is a safety issue. After all, a forgotten thing can turn out to be an explosive device, - an employee of the press service of the Vnukovo airport explained to NI. - If a travel bag is found, it is first checked for explosiveness. If everything is fine, an act is drawn up, an inventory is drawn up, and the find is sent to the unclaimed baggage room.

Each airport has at least two rooms where they keep forgotten and lost things. One contains the "losses" of passengers of domestic flights, the other - things found in the terminals and on board international flights. This division is not accidental. The fact is that the search for the owners of things flying within the country is carried out by the services of the airports themselves. Air harbor specialists contact the airport of departure, clarify the details of the baggage to find out who it belongs to, and return it to the owner. With international baggage, the situation is slightly different. Information about him is entered into the World Tracer automated search system. After a missing person's report is received, all information in a special encoding enters a single database, the center of which is located in the United States. From there, the data is sent to all the airports on the planet included in the system, after which they are automatically compared with information about unclaimed baggage, which is entered into the database by airlines from around the world. If the data of the lost and found luggage match, it will be sent to the owner.

However, this owner tracing system only works with luggage left in the terminal or on the belt. After registration and passing through customs control, a special marking is attached to the baggage, which indicates the flight number, point of departure and arrival, information about the owner. It is more difficult if a handbag, other hand luggage and small items are lost, the owner of which is almost impossible to establish. Such items will be stored in the unclaimed luggage compartment until the owner finds himself or until the expiration of the storage period. According to the decree of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, if things were found on board the aircraft, they will wait 30 days for the owners in the storage room, after which they will be transferred to the terminal for storage for six months. The same storage period is provided for unclaimed baggage.

According to airport employees, they are doing everything possible to find the owner and return the loss to him. In particular, the press service of Vnukovo gives the following example: “Recently, a television shooting took place in one of our terminals. Before entering the sterile zone, the entire film crew underwent a mandatory screening. There, the journalist, without noticing it, forgot his passport. In the midst of the filming process, his wife called him and said that his passport was waiting for him at the control. As it turned out later, the security officers immediately found the loss and reported it over the speakerphone, however, as is often the case with passengers, the journalist simply did not pay attention to this announcement.

But if the owner has not been found, and the storage period at the airport has expired, then the forgotten things are disposed of. According to representatives of airports, such a fate awaits clothing, cosmetics, and even expensive equipment. The only exceptions are new items with a tag - they "are subject to sale in the manner prescribed by law", or rather, they will find new owners in second-hand stores and commission shops. So that everything acquired by overwork does not burn out with a blue flame, experts advise absent-minded passengers to write their last name, address, telephone number (with city and country codes) legibly and in Latin letters on two tags. One should be attached to the outside of the suitcase, the second should be placed on top of things inside. In addition, it is better to remove used baggage tags so that there is no confusion.

The procedure for storing forgotten things at railway stations and on trains is slightly different. If the find was found at the station, it is sent to the storage room, where it stays for 30 days, after which it is disposed of. If the loss is detected on the train, then it is handed over to the head of the train, who, in turn, transfers it to the storage room at the final station. “The only thing that is disposed of immediately is the food found in the luggage,” Olga Vnukovskaya, an employee of the Russian Railways press service, told NI. - But, as practice shows, most often passengers lose documents, phones and laptops. Naturally, the luggage storage staff try to look for the owners if there is at least some contact information. (http://www.newizv.ru/society/2011-08-26/150168-rasprodazha-propazh.html)

For those who are especially curious, there is a video on how to open a suitcase without opening the lock.

According to the rules of the International Air Transport Association, lost items at the airport are sent to the lost baggage auction. First, suitcases are handed over for special storage (for a maximum of 2 years). If the owner does not return for his belongings within the specified period, the suitcases and bags are disposed of or put up for auction.

Lost luggage auction

The latter practice is widespread in the USA and. The lot is not unpacked, so the buyer does not know anything about the contents of the suitcase. It is possible, by pure chance, to buy expensive things, electronics and souvenirs from a trip.

There are many ways to return things to the rightful owner, but they do not always work, and destroying bags is less profitable and pathetic. Before becoming auction items, suitcases undergo a certain identification procedure.

When passengers check in, a tag is affixed to their baggage with information about the owner, points of departure and arrival. For various reasons, the label may be torn off, mixed up, or damaged to such a state that the data cannot be read. In most cases, the loss is found within 24 hours by the passengers themselves. There are a few things that you can do to reduce the risk of losing your luggage.

If the bag or suitcase has been left unattended for more than 24 hours, a luggage detective will deal with it. It is the responsibility of this person to describe the loss and upload the resulting parameters (color, size and special features) to the worldwide database of missing baggage. The base sends information to all airports in the world, and in any air harbor the owner can find out about the lost suitcase.

After 5 days of inactivity, the bag is opened in storage. The luggage detective describes all the contents and launches information about things into the aforementioned database.

If, according to this information, the suitcase is not found, it will be sent to the auction.

Every year, 80 thousand bags and suitcases are lost in the world. Airlines can give luggage to the auction after 3 months, despite the 2 years established by international rules. As a rule, auctions are held right at the airport. Suitcases are never unpacked.

Prohibited items are confiscated, as well as food. Purchased things are most often left to themselves, but there are people who are trying to find the owners of lost bags on their own. The most famous of these people is the Englishwoman Luna Labu.

Lost air baggage sold under the hammer in Germany

Some buyers are driven by intrigue, some by the desire to buy things for relatives and friends, because for 80 euros you can buy a Chanel dress and shoes. Lufthansa's auction bid starts at an average of 10 euros, and its final price is unpredictable.

Lost Luggage Store in Scottsboro

According to statistics, the leaders in baggage loss are major European airlines: Lufthansa, AirFrance and British Airways. At Kansai Airport in the Japanese city of Osaka, not a single bag has been lost since 1994.

Did you know that in Europe the practice of selling luggage that the owners once lost and did not return for it has long been developed? Airlines store other people's suitcases for two years and then simply put them up for auction. The most interesting thing is that neither the airline employees nor the buyers know what they will get in this suitcase, but, nevertheless, they are bargaining for the suitcase they like with unknown items inside.

One can guess about the filling of the suitcase only by its outlines. For example, in Poland, at such an auction, the starting price was 2.5 euros per suitcase, but the buyers got excited, and the highest bid was about 150 euros per suitcase with who knows what inside. The average price for a suitcase was about 80 euros. Mostly there were clothes inside, but there were also appliances: laptops, tablets, cell phones, digital cameras. Auctions are always a lot of fun, because sometimes people pay a lot of money for completely unnecessary things. And some are bargained to the last and get branded accessories and clothes. Who cares.

The most popular auctions are in Italy. The inhabitants of the Apeninnesian peninsula are so fond of excitement that they arrange auctions there every day from 10 am to 4 pm. Sometimes the rates there reach as much as 500 dollars! The starting cost of a suitcase is on average 75 euros.

In Germany, auctions are held only 20 times a year, but the event turns into a real holiday. There, the starting cost is about 10 euros.

There are no auctions in the US. There, all lost suitcases are sent to the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Things eventually end up in the small town of Scottsboro in Alabama. There they are dismantled, cleaned in a specially created laundry and put up for sale.

Sixty percent of goods are clothes. Counters with it occupy the entire first floor of the store. There are also book shelves, CD racks, electronics baskets and jewelry displays. Sports goods occupy an entire section in one of the sections of the store, and in a special room there is a product that does not fall under any of the categories.

Of course, items in the Unclaimed Baggage Center are sold at a huge discount. For example, a lost $1,000 Versace dress can be bought for as little as $55, an Adidas suit for $15, an iPad for $70, a tube of slightly used Japanese toothpaste for 50 cents, a sapphire for $15,000, and a diamond bracelet. - for $7,500, gold wedding rings and pearl necklaces - for half their face value. More than a million customers visit the store every year.

According to statistics, the leaders in lost luggage are Lufthansa, AirFrance and British Airways.

There are no luggage auctions in Russia. Airlines believe that selling other people's things is unfair. Therefore, they always wait for their owners.

• It all started in 1970, when an insurance salesman named Doyle Owens borrowed $300 and a pickup truck and bought about a hundred bags left on the buses. He brought them to Scottsboro, a city of about 15,000, expecting to sell them out within a few weeks. He was surprised when all the bags sold out in one day. For Owens, it was just a small business, which he did until 1978.
• Now the US Baggage Center covers an entire city block of 15,000 square meters and employs 110 workers.

The Polish carrier LOT organized the country's first lost luggage auction. According to the rules established by IATA (International Air Transport Association), lost baggage must be stored for two years.

If, after this period, the owner or possessor of the things does not claim the things, the company has the right to dispose of them.

There were 100 people who wanted to take part in such an auction - that is how many people bought participation tickets worth about 2.5 euros (10 zlotys). An additional feature of the auction was that none of the participants knew what exactly he was buying - all the suitcases were closed, so it only remained to make assumptions about their contents based on their shape and appearance.

At the beginning of the auction, the lots were sold at a price that practically did not exceed the starting price - 2.5 euros. But gradually, the participants of the event began to show more excitement, and the average purchase amount was about 84 euros (PLN 350). The most expensive lot was sold for 143 euros (PLN 600). A total of 67 pieces of luggage were sold for a total of 5,485 euros (PLN 23,000). Most of them contained clothes, but some of the suitcases also contained electronic devices such as laptops, phones and photo scanners.

For those who do not want to find their luggage at such auctions, use these.

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Those who fly frequently will definitely understand us: every time we have to check in a suitcase, our hearts bleed. Therefore, airlines lose suitcases with enviable regularity, without much excitement or even apologies. The first time this happened to Nastya, who flew Airberlin from Warsaw to Helsinki. Since what is in suitcases is much more expensive for girls, Nastya will tell. So, I ended up at the Helsinki airport with a laptop, documents and money, in shorts and a T-shirt, and without a suitcase. I hypnotized the tape with my eyes for a long time, but he never appeared. It was on the eve of a conference in Finland (where you can’t go in shorts), and all the best dresses bought at the June sales in Europe were languishing in a suitcase. In short, I was completely unprepared for this turn of events. The suitcase was brought to the hotel 2 days later, in addition, they compensated for what I spent on basic needs (a dress and a toothbrush). But the sediment remained, so I, if possible, do not hand over the suitcase. The worst, however, was in the USA, where my suitcase was actually lost every second time. This also happened because, even if the suitcase is small (of course, hand luggage), it is taken away from the gate, they say, the luggage compartments on the plane are small, don’t worry, you will receive it at the place of arrival. No exhortations, crying about already lost (although later found) suitcases do not help, and upon arrival the suitcase is not found again. It is usually brought home on the same day or the next (strangely, it seems that it is easier and cheaper for them to arrange courier delivery than to organize the normal movement of luggage). But you have enough time to suffer during this time and suffer about what was in the suitcase. According to my observations, this does not depend on the airline, it is done by all American airlines on which we flew, which causes real inconvenience. For example, our friends were going on a hike, they flew to Utah for this, as they thought, with suitcases full of equipment for the hike. However, the suitcases with them did not arrive, they were brought only a few days later, and all this time the friends could not go on a hike, thus losing a lot of time.

I have always wondered (although I thought about it with horror) what happens to suitcases that never found their owners. After all, it is very easy to get lost forever: there are so many identical black suitcases that are not even signed, and even if you climb inside, there will not always be something identifying the owner. So, these suitcases end up in… Scottsboro. In this town of Alabama is the so-called Unclaimed Baggage Center - a huge store selling what could be missing from your suitcase.

At the entrance to the store is a small impromptu museum of unusual things that have not found their owners.

Among them are silverware decorated with figures of the apostles, an old Russian icon, a Jewish prayer book, a rather old Polish baptismal medallion, scenery from famous films - in short, things that were obviously dear to their owners no less than to me - dresses.
Well, the quotes of the “great ones” about how unusual the store itself is.

How and why do our precious things get there?
According to the store's official website, 99.5% of checked-in suitcases on domestic flights go straight to their owners upon arrival (false!). 0.5-1% of suitcases do not arrive with passengers, but within 5 days 95% of them find their way to the owner. Another half of the remaining suitcases are within 3 months. And only those suitcases that have remained abandoned end up in this center, which has a contract with several airline and bus companies. Often things are terribly dirty, wrinkled, wet, so the staff puts them in order. I must say that there are a lot of staff there (no wonder, because there are a lot of buyers) and they are very polite. The equipment that gets here is tested, in addition, the personal data of the former owner is erased (instead of finding him by them). Hang up price tags.
Of course, some things never hit the shelves, and here the staff seems to have seen enough of everything (on the site they write that they even found a rattlesnake).
The store, as always in America, is a success story (on other people's things - *sobbing). In 1970, insurer Doyle Ovens, having borrowed a truck and $300, for the first time redeemed the "dangling" luggage from the bus company. His venture was immediately successful. In 1974, he already signs a contract with one of the largest airlines (demand exceeded supply!). Among other things, unexpected finds made them successful, for example, Egyptian artifacts dating back to 1500 BC, which were subsequently sold at Christie's auction. Or a 5.8 carat diamond ring. Not surprisingly, the business became a family business and was increasingly promoted, for example, through television shows. Over time, they begin to sell lost or undeclared cargo of legal entities. More than a million people visit the store every year.
It is no coincidence that the prices are higher than in the usual (even supervintage) second-hand store.

The store has everything: wedding dresses -

Ethnic clothes in assortment:

iPads and a bunch of other technology:

That's all, not to mention just huge departments of women's, men's and children's clothing.
In the neighborhood of this center there are small “sticking” shops, of course, incomparable in scale:

In short, if you do not want your things to be rummaged, touched, washed, and then sold for a lot of money, take care of your suitcases. And certainly never put there what is dear to you.
And, finally, and for edification, a donkey, sad for its owners.