Bargains From The Sky

Ever wonder where lost luggage winds up if it never finds its way home? At unclaimedbaggage.com, the website for a 31-year-old store in Scottsboro, Ala., you can buy orphan luggage and cargo at a fraction of the original cost. The site has sold a wide variety of lost goods, including cell-phone accessories, a 75-carat aquamarine, even a suit of armor. "We often say that if these bags could talk, what a story they'd tell," says Bryan Owens, Unclaimed Baggage's CEO. How does the company get its hands on these goods? Airlines pay settlements to passengers whose bags they can't find after 90 days. Unclaimed Baggage steps in at that point, buying and retrieving unidentified baggage sight unseen for resale.