“At least I have a good one,” said Hannah Taylor as she opened a suitcase full of clothes she had just bought at a London auction that sells dozens of pieces of lost luggage each week.
She was one of around 50 people who gathered for a sale at Greasby’s in Tooting, in the south of London, for a sale of 138 bags.
The auction house expects to get a boost from the recent chaos at London Heathrow airport’s new Terminal 5, when thousands of travelers lost their bags following technical problems when it opened on March 27.
For Taylor, 31, this is a first.
She traveled from Newbury, west of London, to test out a plan hatched by a friend — buy suitcases cheaply at auction and then sell their contents on Internet auction site eBay.
“It’s a hobby,” she said. “I’ve come to see, maybe I’ll get designer gear. It’s pot luck.”
Taylor had just bought seven suitcases for £213 (US$417), but worried that their contents might be more intimate than she expected.
“I thought everything was clean and folded, wrapped in plastic [but] some frequent bidders told me that you get lots of rubbish, dirty underwear,” she said.
Some 42.4 million bags were lost around the world last year — 18.86 bags per 1,000 passengers, at an estimated cost of US$3.8 billion to the aviation industry.
Some 85 percent are reunited within 48 hours but 0.57 bags per thousand passengers are never returned home and often end up at auction houses.
The International Air Transport Association said that airlines must spend 100 days trying to reunite lost bags with their owners before selling them off.
British Airways, the sole carrier operating at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, still has some weeks before it can start selling off lost bags and, in any case, says it has reunited most of the lost bags with their owners.
But it does often send lost bags to auction houses and, a spokesman said, donates money earned from the sales to charity.
“In a good week, we can have 300 lots, but after the chaos at Terminal 5, we are expecting many bags in the coming weeks,” said Christine Satchett, owner and auctioneer of Greasby’s.
The contents of the bags are sorted in the auction house’s reception area. Valuable items such as electrical equipment and jewelry are sold separately, while the rest is put back into the cases at random.
It is a lucky dip — and some buyers get more than they bargained for.
“They could buy some guy’s dirty washing as some just walk out [of the airport] and they don’t want their rucksack — they just want money from the insurance,” Satchett said.
With a starting price of £5, suitcases are given a brief description and then the bidding begins.
Taylor snapped up lot two for £24. It contains scores of T-shirts, all in good condition.
But then she looks in a side pocket and finds a silicon bra insert used for temporary breast enhancement.
“Oh my god! What’s that? I’ve bought a boob job!” she screams.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to