Came across this site today -

"A whopping 99.5% of domestic airlines’ checked bags are picked up by their owners at the baggage carousel. Roughly ½ of 1% don’t arrive with the passengers. Five days later, an impressive 95% of those delayed bags find their way home. That’s a great track record considering the 100’s of millions of flights and passengers that criss-cross the country and the globe every day.

An intense 3-month search process reunites over half of the remaining bags with the happy passengers. Claims are paid to the astonishingly small fraction of a percent of owners whose bags are never found.

Only after these exhaustive attempts to reunite the luggage with the owners do the airlines call in the crew from Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Unclaimed Baggage Center is under contract with airlines and other transportation companies to purchase the luggage that can’t be traced to the owners. Truckloads of lost luggage are transported to Scottsboro, Alabama, sight unseen."

After everything is said and done they receive 20,000 items per day! Check them out at http://unclaimedbaggage.com