Lost Airline Luggage Finds a Surprising Home in Alabama

SCOTTSBORO, Ala.—Most people would be shocked to find a live rattlesnake or a $64,000 platinum Rolex watch inside someone’s lost bag at an airport or hotel.

Things equally as strange have turned up, however, and each orphaned suitcase at Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama, has its own backstory.

The unique store, which occupies a 50,000-square-foot retail space, is the country’s top spot for liquidating lost luggage and stocks approximately 7,000 items from airports every day.

“The standard is the airlines will conduct a three-month search for the original owner,” said Matt Owens, head of business planning at Unclaimed Baggage.

After the waiting period, the claims process begins. Travelers receive compensation for lost luggage, which are then considered salvage. Unclaimed Baggage sends a truck to collect the bags and bring them back to Scottsboro, where they are carefully opened and their contents inspected, cleaned, graded, authenticated, and sorted into items that can be sold, donated, or discarded.

“Our mission is to redeem the lost, the unclaimed, and the rejected, for good,” Owens said. “Many of the items will be sold, and they’ll have a new story by whoever buys them.”

A New Opportunity

Unclaimed Baggage is something few could have dreamed up, until a twist of fate 55 years ago inspired Hugo Doyle Owens, Matt Owens’ grandfather.

At the time, Hugo Doyle Owens was an insurance salesman with little interest in the world of misplaced suitcases. He did, however, have a passion for ham radio.

“He would get up early before work in the morning and go out to his shed,” Matt Owens said. “He’d hop on the radio and connect with his old buddies from the Korean War—all over the country—all over the world, really.”

One of his friends worked for bus company Trailways in Washington. Passengers’ misplaced bags frustrated him, as they couldn’t be thrown away or stored.

Sensing an opportunity, Hugo Doyle Owens drove to Washington in a borrowed orange-and-white 1965 Chevy pickup and offered to buy them for $300. With his first load secured, he was officially in business.

Items in the store are priced at just a fraction of their usual cost, turning every misplaced suitcase into a potential treasure trove for bargain hunters, said Sonni Hood, senior public relations manager at Unclaimed Baggage.

In the 1980s, the store came across a well-used Gucci suitcase. Inside, they found ancient Egyptian artifacts, including a painted wooden sarcophagus mask and a painted and gilded wooden forest hawk sarcophagus. Some pieces dated as far back as 1500 B.C. When the items were found to be authentic, they were auctioned off through Christie’s, a British auction house.

Other interesting finds include a Greek Athena owl coin, an Egyptian axe head, a good luck charm featuring the god Pataikos, genuine medieval armor and weapons, a basketball signed by Michael Jordan, and a cowboy hat autographed by actor Gary Sinise.

Some of the stranger finds have included a freeze-dried chicken foot, a toilet seat, a glass eye, a suitcase full of rocks, an unusual Barbie doll, an old mustache curler, and a silicone pregnancy belly.

One surprising discovery was Hoggle, an original Jim Henson puppet from the 1986 film “Labyrinth” starring David Bowie. Hood said the company restored the puppet and put it in the store museum.

Perhaps the most eerie find was a collection of shrunken human heads, which were also immortalized as reproductions in the store’s museum.

“We have discovered at least two authentic shrunken heads throughout the company’s history,” Hood said. “One was given to a doctor years ago. I’m not sure what happened to the other one. The three in the museum are replicas, though they were discovered in lost luggage.”

Building Networks

The company now works with major airlines, international airports, and bus, transportation, and train companies to manage luggage that remains unclaimed after 90 days, Matt Owens said.

“I’d say part of it’s just providential,” he said of the business’s growth. “Part of it is we’re big believers in partnerships. We spent decades building close partnerships with the airlines, and close partnerships with our customers as well.”

According to SendMyBag.com, a personal effects shipping company, nearly 2 million travel bags are lost or stolen each year in the United States, costing airlines approximately $2 billion annually.

American Airlines handled 54.5 million checked bags between January and June of this year, according to the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection’s August 2025 report. Out of these, 364,191, or about 0.67 percent of those bags, went missing. United Airlines handled 37.9 million bags during the same time, with 284,692 bags—or 0.75 percent—reported as missing.

Unclaimed Baggage’s 2025 report revealed that more than 620 million passengers traveled in the United States in 2024, with about 1.7 million flying daily.

The Epoch Times reached out to several airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and Washington Dulles International Airport for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Denver International Airport told The Epoch Times that its unclaimed bags go to a surplus warehouse managed by GovDeals, a liquidity services marketplace.

Owens said that as long as people fly on planes, lost bags will show up on the store’s shelves, and each new bag brings its own excitement and reward.

“We like to say that if the bags could talk, what stories they would tell. It makes your imagination kind of go wild,” Matt Owens said.

Global Attraction

Hood described the store as one of Alabama’s most popular places to visit, right after its sunny beaches on the southern coast.

“Every single year, we will welcome someone from every [one of the] 50 states,” she said. “We’ve welcomed people from more than 40 countries throughout our tourist history.”

Hood said most shoppers are excited when they first enter the store, and people have even waited outside for a long time to get in.

The priciest thing that the store has ever sold was a men’s platinum Rolex watch, valued at $64,000.

“We sold it for $32,000, at half off the appraisal value. That was back in 2014,” Hood said. “And the gentleman who purchased that watch, he and his wife still frequent the store regularly. He’s a watch collector. He shared with us a year or so ago that its recent appraisal was over $100,000. So I think he got a great deal.”

Matt Owens said the store once got five pieces of modern art by a well-known painter that seemed to be worth millions of dollars.

“Our authentication team started digging,” he said. “That process flagged the attention of the FBI, so the FBI came knocking on our doors, saying, ‘What is this? Why do you have it? You’re going to need to hand this over.’ Of course, we cooperated, and after their team did their digging, they determined that they were fake.”

The pieces were so convincing, in fact, that the FBI asked if they could use them to teach agents how to spot forgeries, Owens said.

Of all the items found, Hood said the most startling was a live rattlesnake in the pocket of a duffel bag. How the rattlesnake got into the bag remains a mystery, but Hood said its sudden appearance left everyone feeling, well, rattled. The snake was safely released back into the wild, she said.

Lost and Found

Recently, Unclaimed Baggage helped a traveler who had lost a religious item that was very important to him.

Yoni Lebovits, 33, from Long Beach, New York, told The Epoch Times about how he had lost his treasured tefillin during a trip to a Las Vegas resort. Tefillin are black leather boxes with Torah scrolls that are worn by Jewish men during weekday morning prayers.

“At first, I thought I still had it and didn’t realize it was missing until I was already back home in New York,” Lebovits said. “I assumed I had unpacked it, but couldn’t find it anywhere and couldn’t believe I had actually lost it. It wasn’t until I called the hotel that I understood I must have left it there somehow.”

Lebovits said the tefillin were a gift from his parents for his bar mitzvah. Losing them would have been devastating.

His further efforts to locate the tefillin led to a false sense of success. A hotel representative called, saying they had been found, but it was later realized that the hotel had sent them to a partner company that handled unclaimed lost items.

“After several calls with the hotel, I felt like I had hit a dead end,” Lebovits said.

In a final burst of determination, he tracked down the company, which happened to be Unclaimed Baggage, and contacted Matt Owens through LinkedIn.

“To my surprise, Matt replied quickly, saying he would try to help—and soon after, he followed up, saying he had found my tefillin and was sending them back to me. I was beyond relieved and incredibly grateful,” Lebovits said.

When he opened the box, he found that the store had not only safely returned his tefillin but had also added a company sticker and a thermos. Unclaimed Baggage also included a company pamphlet and a $100 gift card for its online store.

“That level of generosity and care was completely unexpected—the cherry on top of being reunited with something so meaningful,” Lebovits said.

Charity Begins at Home

By giving forgotten bags a second life and matching their contents with new owners, the store not only keeps its doors open but also keeps millions of items out of landfills and supports a variety of charities and nonprofits.

Helping the community is a big part of Unclaimed Baggage, which gives away millions of dollars in products to charities and groups around the world every year. In 2024, the company gave more than 2 million items a second life, and more than 1 million items went to nearly 100 charitable nonprofits around the world. That year, about 94 tons of unusable items were sent to be recycled.

Jennifer Kritner manages the store’s retail operations and culture. She also leads the Reclaimed for Good charitable foundation, which partners with local and global charity groups to help people reuse and share items with those in need. The program also supports foster parenting through a donation effort called Love Luggage, which provides foster families with hand-painted suitcases filled with supplies. As a foster parent, Kritner said she believes that there is a growing need for support networks and that Unclaimed Baggage is in a unique position to help.

“We give people an opportunity to paint works of art for foster children. What’s been amazing about that is I’ve painted a suitcase, I’ve coordinated events, I’ve delivered these suitcases to foster children,” Kritner told The Epoch Times.

Brand-new clothes, toys, shoes, undergarments, and toiletries make an immediate impact on a foster child’s life, she said.

“We’ve donated thousands of suitcases throughout the years. Love Luggage is an important part of what we do in our give-back effort,” Kritner said.

Air Travel Tips

Unclaimed Baggage included in its report several tips to help prevent lost luggage.

The store suggests avoiding common black bags and carry-ons, instead opting for items that make your bag stand out, such as a bright tag, patterned strap, patch, or sticker.

It also suggests the use of tracking tags that link to your personal devices, which should have the latest updates.

Wearing expensive jewelry is also a risk, according to Unclaimed Baggage. Changes in air pressure and dehydration can make your fingers swell, so you might take off your rings and forget them.

Finally, before deplaning, the store recommends checking under and around the airplane seat for personal belongings.