Lost-luggage store offers unusual bargains

If you've ever had your bag misplaced by an airline, you've probably wondered, where does lost luggage go?

If it truly is lost and not merely misrouted, delayed or mistakenly carried off by a fellow traveler, chances are it will end its journey at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a superstore full of one-of-a-kind bargains nestled in the picturesque Appalachian foothills community of Scottsboro, Ala.

In this sleepy town of 15,000, it's hard to miss UBC. At 40,000 square feet, the land of lost luggage covers a full city block with a jaw-dropping assortment of designer clothes, cameras, electronics, jewelry, sporting goods, luggage and what-were-they-thinking oddities.

Each day, an estimated 7,000 new items hit the retail floor at rock-bottom prices: 50 to 80 percent off the original retail price for pre-owned merchandise, 20 to 50 percent off for new.

Spokeswoman Brenda Cantrell says the unbeatable combination of price, quality and the unexpected is what attracts more than one million shoppers to UBC every year.

"We never know what we're going to get and that's what makes it so intriguing to anyone who comes here," she says. "We may get a suitcase full of belt buckles or we may get a suitcase full of Versace gowns. You've got to come with an open mind."

Rockets to rattlers
Doyle Owens started the business 35 years ago when, on a lark, he took out a loan, borrowed a pickup truck and bought a load of unclaimed baggage from a bus line in Washington, D.C. Owens thought it would take a few days to empty his truck; instead, he sold out the first night.

Over the years, UCB has established exclusive contracts with many of the nation's airlines to buy their lost and unclaimed baggage for a fixed rate, contents unseen. Company trucks collect and deliver these wayward orphans to Scottsboro.

"When you come in, you don't just pick up a suitcase and purchase it and carry it home, contents and all," Cantrell explains. "We unpack these bags and sort through them. We throw about a third away, we donate about a third to charity and the remainder we launder and dry clean in our own facilities and stock them to our retail store every day."

That can make for some surprising finds. Over the years, UBC has unpacked a full suit of armor, a guidance system for an F-16 fighter, a 3,500-year-old Egyptian artifact, a camera for the space shuttle, a fully packed parachute (shouldn't that have been a carry-on?) and a live rattlesnake. The company returned the top security items to the government.

In 1995, son Bryan Owens took the helm. Under his guidance, UBC expanded its retail store and formed exclusive agreements with the nation's major ground carriers. As a result, some 40 percent of the retail store is now unclaimed cargo, frequently new items, often in multiples.

"Just as baggage goes astray, cargo does, too," says Cantrell. "It may have been shipped to the wrong address or been refused."

Acceptable losses
One recent happy UBC shopper was Dr. Brent Bowen, professor of aviation at the University of Nebraska-Omaha Aviation Institute, who visited the store for the first time.

"I bought two bags and filled them up," he says. "I probably bought back some of my old stuff."