2.06 · The Store Where Lost Bags End Up

The Store Where Lost Bags End Up

Airlines find the owners of almost all the bags they lose, and usually very quickly. When they can’t, they keep searching for about three months. Still, a few suitcases are never claimed, and many of them end up in the same place: a store in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama.

The story began in 1970. Doyle Owens, a local insurance salesman, heard from a friend that a bus company in Washington, D.C., had a lot of bags that nobody had collected. Owens borrowed $300 and a pickup truck, drove to Washington and bought the bags. Back home, his family helped him clean and sort everything. Then they sold it on card tables in an old rented house.

The sales went so well that Owens left his insurance job. In 1978, he signed his first contract with an airline. Today, the Unclaimed Baggage store covers more than a city block, and over a million people visit it every year.

Not everything can be sold: more than half of the items aren’t good enough, so they’re given away or thrown away. The rest fill the shelves with clothes, cameras and ski boots. It may be the strangest store in the country. You never know what someone might have packed.