Confessions of an RVer: SCOTTSBORO, ALABAMA

Mr. W and I made a stop in Scottsboro, Alabama. It is not out of our way on our route to South Carolina and we thought since we were this close, why not? The main reason we wanted to stop here is because Scottsboro is the home to the "Unclaimed Baggage Center"(UBC).

This place buys all the unclaimed baggage from all the airlines. They bring the luggage here, open it, and then sells what is appropriate for the public to buy. The UBC has been featured on The Today Show, Oprah, David Letterman, CBS Evening News, and Good Morning America. Actually, Tuesday is the best day to go because they roll out all the most popular new stuff they have opened since the previous Tuesday. But, Tuesday didn't fit in our schedule, so we went on Monday. They roll out 7,000 new items each day, so I'm thinking any day is a good day to be there. It is much less crowded during the week. They offer a lot of in-store fun events on the weekends. You can check their event calendar on their website if you plan on going on a weekend.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was expecting. But, when you arrive, it is a fairly large building. As a matter of fact, the store is 40,000 square feet. When you enter, there is a map of where everything is. There are two display cases at each end that contain some of the most costly items they have received and kept. They have some very unusual finds displayed throughout the building and in most cases, they have the history of the item displayed by the item.

Sign outside as you arrive

Map of the place

I was wondering how that worked for the employees. They had this info as one of the slides on a looping slide show in the entrance area.

Is that a good thing or not? Haha!

There are tons and tons of stuff! There are women's clothing. That includes sweaters, coats, vests, skirts, jeans, slacks, suits, scarves, shoes, and even formal wear. I'm even talking wedding dresses! I hope the luggage got lost after the wedding! There are men's clothing. That includes pretty much everything that was in the women's section except for skirts and formal wear.

All clothing is professionally cleaned. In fact, UBC has the largest known commercial dry cleaning and laundry facility in state of Alabama. They wash or dry clean 20,000 items per day. Can you even wrap your mind around that? I'm having trouble with that! That is more than most professional dry cleaners handle in a year.

There is jewelry. The "junk jewelry" is hanging out, the good stuff is locked up in jewelry cases. I think they are a little overpriced but they claim they do a lot of research and comparison pricing for a lot of sources.

There is one floor dedicated to electronics. WOW! All of the electronic equipment is thoroughly tested and all the personal data is erased before it is sold. There was one full WALL of headphones. There was 5 cases of laptops. There were 10 tables of Leapsters, Gameboys, DVD's, and CD's.

Just one case of I-Pads and Kindle/Nooks

Another case

All these DSLR cameras. My camera was checking to see if one of these was a long, lost relative.

Only about 1/2 of 1% of checked bags fail to show up at the baggage carousel. Within 5 days almost 98% of the delayed bags have made their way home. During the next 3 months, through a comprehensive baggage tracing process conducted by the airlines, over half of the remaining bags are reunited with their owners.

A surprisingly small fraction of a percent of passenger bags checked each year are ultimately deemed lost. Yet, even that small percentage results in a warehouse full of unclaimed articles, all waiting for you to discover at UBC.

So, if you are waiting anxiously to see what I could not live without from the UBC, here it is.

2 Tshirts (scarf making material), lens caps for my camera (I keep losing mine), aluminum foil, and slow cooker liners

The children's section, home section, and "last chance" section are in another building. There was a sporting goods area and luggage area. You can seriously spend some major time at this place because it is all worth looking through. However, I have been here, done this and I don't see any reason to do it again.