\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span> yellow suitcase draws me in like a beacon. It is stacked on a dark shelf at the back of Greasby\u2019s auction house in Tooting, south London, and looks brand new, with a hard exterior and wheels that Richard Stacey, a Greasby\u2019s regular who is dressed in shorts, a plaid shirt and a cream bucket hat, tells me to test. So I test them \u2013 and they work. If I was just buying a bag, that is all I would need to know. But this isn\u2019t just a bag: the zip is locked and when I lift it, it is heavy. This yellow suitcase is filled with a stranger\u2019s lost belongings. And I won\u2019t find out what is inside unless I submit a winning bid.<\/p>\n I write down the lot number, 281, and my bid of \u00a370 on a form, along with four other bids \u2013 for a larger black bag that is filled to the brim; a sensible blue suitcase with a compass in the handle that I expect belongs to someone older; a small wheelie in Louis Vuitton-like check; and a smart piece of hand luggage that I assume must be a businessperson\u2019s. In all, I bid \u00a3250 for five suitcases \u2013 way too much \u2013 but Stacey has been to the auction house 10 times before, and tells me I probably won\u2019t win if I bid less than \u00a340 on each.<\/p>\n The next day, adrenaline races through my body as I refresh my emails to see what I have won. I have got four of the five suitcases for \u00a3100, including the yellow, blue and black bags as well as the fake-looking Louis Vuitton roller.<\/p>\n Stacey\u2019s son calls what I have just done \u201csuitcase gambling\u201d, and it seems as though people are hooked. Lost luggage hauls regularly attract millions of views on social media from people keen to get a glimpse inside a stranger\u2019s life. Recently, for instance, Becky Chorlton, a 27-year-old from Cheshire in north-west England, paid \u00a380 for a blue suitcase from Heathrow that she unpacked in a TikTok video that has had more than 15.1m views.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018People love watching people have bargains\u2019 \u2026 Becky Chorlton opens a lost Heathrow suitcase, viewed more than 15m times on TikTok. <\/span> Photograph: TikTok\/beckysbazaar<\/p>\n On his first attempt, Stacey paid \u00a360 for a Samsonite suitcase that he reckons belonged to a \u201csmall American lady of about 50\u201d. The clothes inside were all about a size six, short in the leg and immaculately ironed. She seemed like \u201ca professional lady, who liked dining, liked going away with her friends\u201d, he says. \u201cI think she was probably on a cruise for about a week or so, because she had seven pairs of shoes.\u201d There were a few pairs of low heels and some Gucci sliders \u2013 which Stacey sold on eBay for the cost of the suitcase.<\/p>\n Stacey, a physiotherapist and father of five from Kingston, in south-west London, likes to think the woman had enough money not to be too bothered about getting her bag back. \u201cIt would be nice to track it and give these things back but I couldn\u2019t,\u201d he says. He kept the suitcase, which he estimates is worth about \u00a3250, as it was in good condition, while the profits he made from selling its contents went to a fund he has set up to help with his daughter\u2019s university fees. He gave the rest of the items to a charity shop.<\/p>\n Stacey enjoys the randomness of the auctions, where he recently won a suitcase that contained hijabs and women\u2019s football kits from what he suspects was an Arab country. But he also likes how low risk the auctions are. He gives himself a \u00a3120 budget each time and says that because it\u2019s a blind-bid process, \u201cyou\u2019re not going to get carried away in a bidding war with anyone. It\u2019s just a bit of light relief\u201d.<\/p>\n For Chevelle Jacobs, who I meet at Greasby\u2019s in April, when she is sizing up a hard, shiny, black suitcase, the auctions are as much a social activity with friends, as they are an opportunity to bag a bargain. She has travelled from east London a couple of times since her first auction last year to buy suitcases for her holidays. But she has also bought champagne and laptops \u2013 often, these have been seized by the police in raids. Jacobs works for the Elizabeth line, which sends its lost items to Greasby\u2019s, but she found out about airlines selling their lost luggage there on TikTok.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Chaos in the baggage world\u2019 \u2026 hard-sided black suitcases are used by almost half of global travellers and are the easiest to misplace. <\/span> Photograph: Twenty47 Studio\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A few months before we met, she had paid \u00a320 for a beige suitcase with a dark brown zip that \u201clooked quite fancy\u201d. She opened it to find a Louis Vuitton handbag, some nice clothes \u201cfor someone about five inches shorter\u201d, and several pairs of designer shoes, which she gave to her brother\u2019s girlfriend, who is a size three. The contents were a bonus for Jacobs, who needed a new suitcase for a holiday: \u201cIt\u2019s two-thirds cheaper than a suitcase outside is going to be,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n When luggage is lost, it is first logged on a database that lets baggage handlers know the bag hasn\u2019t made it on to the plane. It is then tracked and rerouted. If the tags have fallen off, handlers open it to see if there is a name and phone number inside, or if there are distinguishable contents. Almost 92% of bags are reunited with their owners, but if a bag is unclaimed for three months, it is sent to a third party.<\/p>\n International routes are five times more likely to lose luggage than domestic flights, with 46% of losses occurring when a passenger transits through a second airport. Other factors at play include: ticketing errors, tagging problems, bag switches, security concerns, airport operations, customs, weather disruptions, cancellations and weight restrictions. In the UK, more than 28% of passengers have had their hold luggage mishandled in the past five years.<\/p>\n \u201cOut of the pandemic, there was just so much chaos in the baggage world,\u201d says Nicole Hogg, who is the portfolio director of baggage at SITA, an IT company that services the air transport industry. In 2022, globally, about 26m pieces of luggage were mishandled, nearly eight bags in every 1,000; before the pandemic it was six in every 1,000. \u201cIt was a good learning curve for the industry.\u201d Handlers, who were laid off when airports were shut, didn\u2019t come back to their demanding jobs. \u201cIt\u2019s tough. People maximise how they pack their bags for 32kg.\u201d With fewer staff and inexperienced recruits sorting through the baggage, it quickly became apparent that the processes couldn\u2019t cope with the influx of post-pandemic travel. \u201cThey weren\u2019t as prepared when people came back flying. They thought it would be kind of a slow uptake and it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Full of surprises \u2026 found treasures on display at the Unclaimed Baggage Museum in Scottsboro, Alabama.<\/span> Photograph: Unclaimed Baggage<\/p>\n Since then, Hogg has seen a big push towards automation, digitalisation and computer vision tech in baggage handling. SITA has introduced a new process to automatically re-flight bags using AI to predict the next available route for the bag without any human intervention. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pressure from passengers. They say, I can track my pizza delivery. I can track my Amazon parcel. Why can\u2019t I track my bag?\u201d Some airlines have integrated Apple\u2019s new share item location feature for AirTag, allowing them to reunite lost luggage with its owner more quickly. It helped reduce the number of mishandled bags from 7.6 to 6.9 per 1,000 passengers in 2023.<\/p>\n In the past, airlines would have incinerated or dumped lost luggage. But a man called Doyle Owens found a more sustainable solution. He started Unclaimed Baggage, collecting lost property from the US\u2019s main bus lines, Trailways and Greyhound, in 1965, and later from the airlines, in 1973, to resell at his store. His son, Bryan, now runs the company, which has saved 3,300 truckloads of luggage from landfill.<\/p>\n Greasby\u2019s now receives about 70-80 suitcases a month, a lot less than the 200 suitcases they once received from London\u2019s airports, <\/strong>and a small portion of the 1.8m bags that were lost in air travel around the world last year, according to SITA. Mulberry Auctions in Glasgow hosts two sales of unclaimed airport lost property a month. Bristol Commercial Valuers and Auctioneers also sells lost luggage. Lots more is sold on websites such as Unclaimed Baggage, which is still the only retailer of lost luggage in the US.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these bags could talk, what a story they would have to tell,\u201d says Bryan Owens, who remembers handling one particularly \u201cold dingy, dirty bag\u201d that had a 40 carat solitaire emerald swaddled inside it. \u201cIt was the biggest precious stone I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d In another well-travelled Gucci suitcase, he found Egyptian artefacts dating back to 1500BC: everything from scarabs and burial masks to a mummified pet falcon. \u201cI\u2019ve never been able to handle something that old,\u201d Bryan says. His team contacted experts at Christie\u2019s in New York, who sold the items for them.<\/p>\n Unclaimed Baggage employs about 400 openers, who have spent 32,000 hours sorting through lost bags the company collects from airports, train stations, bus depots, hotels and casinos this year alone. In the past year, they have found a Turkish ceremonial wedding headdress, a letter signed by Eleanor Roosevelt dated 1944, a bottle with a preserved rattlesnake in a jar of whisky (nothing on the live one they found a few years ago), and some silicone butt pads. There was a freeze-dried chicken foot, a teeth bedazzling kit, a glass eye, and a full sheet of uncut $2 bills. Mostly though, they find underwear, shoes, T-shirts, blouses, jeans, dresses, headphones and books. In 2024, Colleen Hoover\u2019s It Ends With Us was the most frequently found book.<\/p>\n Chorlton is not convinced that the Delsey suitcase she bought from Undelivrd (which also sells mystery bags, wrapped in black plastic, that it delivers to your door) was genuinely someone\u2019s lost luggage, as the items didn\u2019t seem to match a single person. \u201cThere was some kids\u2019 stuff, there was men\u2019s, women\u2019s,\u201d she says, and also traditional outfits from around the world. But some of her viewers disagreed. They said that when they go on holiday they often share stuff in their suitcases so that if one goes missing, they still have clothes at the other end. Either way, it was worth paying \u00a380 for, as the suitcase itself is valued at \u00a3220, she says. \u201cPeople love watching people have bargains.\u201d She has bought two more suitcases since April 2024 and opened them on TikTok. <\/strong>The first was a dusty pink bag full of makeup and clothes, new black-sequined UGG boots, an iPad, which was locked, and a couple of pairs of goggles. She sold or donated most of it to her local charity shop, but there were some bits she kept, including a new manicure set and the suitcase, which she uses to transport the clothes she sells at car boot sales and markets.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Like a prank\u2019 \u2026 Carmie Sellitto inspects lost property on TikTok. <\/span> Photograph: TikTok\/touchdalight<\/p>\n TikTok creator Carmie Sellitto knew how well this kind of content did on social media when he tore off the plastic wrapping around a purple suitcase from Heathrow for his 1.2m TikTok followers, but he didn\u2019t realise that he would end up being able to reunite the owner with their suitcase. Most people I spoke to mentioned the strangeness of rummaging through someone else\u2019s personal effects,<\/strong> but Sellito felt especially \u201cweird\u201d, he says, as \u201cthe clothes were unwashed\u201d. There was a briefcase on top, which \u201ckind of felt like a prank\u201d. Underneath were some designer shoes, a Cartier box with a receipt for a ring that cost \u20ac2,400 (\u00a32,079), and a vintage Louis Vuitton bag containing a purse with a credit card and a woman\u2019s ID.<\/p>\n \u201cI Googled the location and it was an hour and 40 minutes\u2019 drive from where I was at my family home, and the next day I took my friend with me and drove to the person\u2019s house to return the suitcase.\u201d The woman had moved, but after posting the video online, her best friend identified the belongings. \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t posted this, this woman wouldn\u2019t have got it back,\u201d Sellitto says.<\/p>\n Today, lost luggage numbers are a small proportion of passenger traffic. Last year, 5.2 billion people travelled by air, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time in five years, with the number expected to double by 2040. The proportion of those who lose their luggage is small. However, that is little consolation for the million or so people whose bags don\u2019t make it to their destination, and whose personal belongings may end up being sold to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n <\/span>Fresh, clean \u2026 the lost yellow bag bought at auction in Tooting, full of laundered clothes. <\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cPeople always say to me at barbecues: what\u2019s the number one thing I should do?\u201d says Hogg. \u201cTrackers are great,\u201d she says, but to ensure lost bags get returned to their owner, her advice is: \u201cPut your name, number and email inside your bag, because they\u2019ll always try to open the bag to see if there\u2019s any information.\u201d Black, hard-sided suitcases are used by almost half of global travellers, so they are the easiest to misplace. Make sure your bag stands out with a bright tag or sticker. And throw out that old underwear if you don\u2019t want the world to see it.<\/p>\n <\/span>Cohesive \u2026 inside the blue suitcase, which likely belonged to a wedding guest. <\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Unlike Stacey and Jacobs, I wasn\u2019t lucky with the suitcases I picked. The best thing about the yellow suitcase was the smell of freshly laundered clothes. The owner, likely a Scottish Rangers fan if the football top folded up inside is anything to go by, must have lost their bag at the start of their holiday rather than on the way home. My guess, from the Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt and three pairs of practical boots is that they were embarking on a hiking trip.<\/p>\n <\/span>Hen do ready \u2026 inside the black bag, harem pants and fluffy cat ears.<\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The contents of the big black bag didn\u2019t seem to belong to one person, unless they were heading for a themed hen do in the countryside. It was an amalgamation of warm clothes: four scarves, tracksuits and jumpers; as well as a hot-pink costume set of harem pants and matching top; a smart black jumpsuit and fluffy cat ears. But the blue suitcase told a more cohesive story: it was probably the suitcase of a wedding guest with a new suit folded up in plastic bags and a white tie. They were prepared for the cold with Adidas tracksuit bottoms, a woolly jumper and a synthetic blanket with a wolf\u2019s face on it.<\/p>\n <\/span>Unnerving \u2026 inside the brown and black check wheelie. <\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The brown chequered suitcase was filled with new children\u2019s clothes, many of them still on hangers, with Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man and text such as \u201cFashion is Passion\u201d printed on the tops. The labels were written in Ukrainian, probably bought for family members living abroad, from a country where clothes are more affordable.<\/p>\n It is an unnerving feeling going through another person\u2019s lost belongings, and the overwhelming urge is to try to reunite them with their rightful owner, but when most of the suitcase\u2019s contents are donated to charity, it is definitely a more sustainable solution than incineration. And the next time I travel, I\u2019ll be sure to tag and label my bags inside and out to avoid having my dirty clothes broadcast to millions of strangers on TikTok.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n