Cool Finds

What’s Inside America’s Lost Luggage? These Travelers Abandoned a Samurai Sword, a Meteorite and a Robot With a Mysterious Purpose

Unclaimed Baggage sells lost belongings at a 50,000-square-foot store in Alabama. An annual report explores how objects packed in 2025 reflect cultural trends

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

April 9, 2026

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When the suitcases arrive, their contents are a mystery. Staffers wearing latex gloves are accustomed to finding clothes, shoes, books, headphones and chargers, and they’re trained to dispose of illegal substances or unknown powders in special bins. They know that sorting through trash is the only way to find treasure.

Imagine unpacking bag after bag, day after day. But one day, amid sneakers and socks, a samurai sword appears. A beekeeping suit emerges from under bracelets and blazers. Cellphones. Jackets. A $43,400 pair of diamond earrings. Jeans. Kindles. A fragment from a meteorite.

Welcome to Unclaimed Baggage, which has been operating in Scottsboro, Alabama, for more than 50 years. The store, which advertises itself as the country’s only retailer of lost luggage, recently released its third annual Found Report, detailing what travelers packed in 2025.

“The Found Report provides a detailed overview of how our habits, values and priorities are evolving,” says Matt Owens, senior vice president of commercial strategy at Unclaimed Baggage, in a statement. “Over time, I believe the report will serve as a cultural time capsule, helping us understand not only where we’ve been, but where we’re going as a society.”

In 2025, nearly one billion passengers flew domestically, while nearly ten billion traveled by plane internationally. The vast majority of checked bags are ultimately reunited with their owners, but Unclaimed Baggage’s focus is the small number that aren’t. After failing to locate an owner within 90 days, airlines send abandoned bags to Scottsboro, where their contents are sold, donated to charity or recycled.

According to the report, unexpected finds from 2025 included a handwritten Japanese manuscript from the 1800s, a clarinet worth $17,500, a bionic knee, a robot with no discernible function, a Ken doll from the 1960s, a Civil War-era cavalry saber and a nuclear radiation detector. One suitcase contained only rat poison, “carefully packed and surprisingly organized.” Another held a set of fake human bones.

The report also listed the most commonly abandoned items. In 2025, staffers logged 209,986 shirts, 128,722 pairs of pants, 57,623 pieces of jewelry, 51,449 mobile phones and 48,736 pairs of shoes. Of the tens of thousands of books, thrillers by Freida McFadden were particularly popular. Staffers also noticed an increasing number of lab-grown diamonds, viral fashion items and trendy collectibles.

“I can’t tell you how many Labubus and Lafufus—fake Labubus—have come through,” Owens tells USA Today’s Zach Wichter.

The store released its inaugural Found Report two years ago, promising a unique window into the zeitgeist. In 2023, staffers noticed an uptick in Taylor Swift merchandise, Apple AirPods, Lululemon apparel and Nintendo Switches. Unusual finds that year included a funeral casket key, a jar of shark teeth, an ancient Greek coin, two live snakes and a Halloween card signed by Richard Nixon.

Unclaimed Baggage was born in 1970, when Owens’ grandfather, insurance salesman Doyle Owens, learned from a friend about a bus company with a lost luggage problem. The bags, which were piling up in a warehouse, would probably end up in a landfill.

“My granddad, coming from a long line of entrepreneurs, decided to buy the bags,” Owens tells Bagable’s Parija Kavilanz. “He scrounged $300, borrowed a pickup truck and drove up to Washington, D.C. to collect the first load of bags. That’s kind of our origin story.”

Doyle enlisted his wife and kids to help sort through his discoveries, which he sold from card tables set up in his home. The business quickly found a customer base, and lines started forming at the door. Doyle began partnering with airlines and quit his day job.

Today, Unclaimed Baggage also purchases lost luggage from casinos, cruise companies, rental car companies, bus depots, train stations and hotels. The store is a major tourist destination that operates out of a 50,000-square-foot space and employs nearly 300 people, including trained baggage openers.

“I think you need to have a bit of bravery to be a baggage opener—you smell a lot of smells, and you see a lot of crazy things,” Sonni Hood, a spokesperson for the store, tells the Boston Globe’s Kari Bodnarchuk. “A typical suitcase is going to have what you expect—blue jeans and sweatshirts and toothbrushes—but then sometimes you open one up and it has human shrunken heads and vacuum-packed frogs, which we have found.”

Unclaimed Baggage also has a robust online presence. On its website, customers can buy bobbleheads, vinyl records, diamond rings, rare watches and several themed “mystery boxes,” among other offerings. For example, an “All Across the U.S.” mystery box priced at $24.99 contains “ten pieces of any type of souvenir in any condition from any U.S. state.”

Once items reach Unclaimed Baggage, they almost never make it back to their original owners—with a few exceptions. Recently, a Jewish man lost his tefillin (leather boxes containing parchment scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah), which had been a gift from his parents, while traveling. He contacted the store, and staffers were able to locate it and return it to him.

Another time, a man purchased ski boots for his fiancée at Unclaimed Baggage, unwittingly selecting a pair she’d previously lost, according to NPR’s Melanie Peeples. When she inspected the boots, she found her name written inside.

Ellen Wexler | | Read More

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.