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If you’ve ever lost luggage, and the airline wasn’t able to find it, it may have ended up at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. In what amounts to an enormous thrift store that’s fueled by airline incompetence, shoppers can peruse the “easy-to-prowl” departments looking for a bargain.

A small sampling of their inventory is available for purchase online (e.g., iPods, Sprint PCS connection cards), but the website features other gems like “What Is It?” — guess what the item is, and you win a “souvenir” — and “Unpack the Bag,” in which you see some of the more valuable or quirky items that have passed through center’s hallowed halls, like a NASA camera.

But it’s not just the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Profit(eer)ing off other people’s lost items is seemingly an Alabama pastime. Even the state government gets in on the action: The Surplus Property Department actually sends its employees into neighboring Florida with a rented 18-foot truck to collect “discarded or confiscated” items from Florida’s airports. Alabama’s municipal governments have first crack at the goods, after which the items are auctioned off — in traditional auctions, as well as on eBay.

To be fair, it’s not just Alabama. Kentucky’s state government also scours Florida’s airports, while Arkansas treks all the way to California, and Pennsylvania scavenges New York. Sanford & Son is alive and well, and working for the state.

tags: travel | Unclaimed Baggage Center | lost luggage | Sanford and Son | Alabama