Or, How To Find Your Pocket Knife On eBay
In a post-9/11 world of
airport security, a booming market has sprung up for items
confiscated by screeners at security checkpoints.
While it is possible under TSA regs to have your pocketknife,
toenail clippers, or cast-iron skillet given to a non-flying member
of your group -- or even have it sent back to your home -- for
convenience's sake, most often items ranging from penknives to
scissors, cigarette lighters to small tools, are simply handed over
to authorities.
In most cases, once you surrender your pocketknife to a friendly
TSA screener, they are then supposed to turn the items over to the
respective state or local governments, as the TSA is not allowed to
profit from selling confiscating items.
Often -- but not always -- the items end up in state surplus
offices. And that's where eBay comes in.
USA Today reports surplus offices in Pennsylvania and Kentucky,
for example, take the items from the TSA, and then pump up state
coffers with money earned by listing the items for sale online --
similar in theory, if not in actual practice, to selling property
confiscated at crime scenes at a police auction.
It can be lucrative. A box containing 500 surrendered Swiss
Army knives sold on eBay in 2004 for $595 -- the highest amount of
money taken in by Pennsylvania's state surplus office since it
began selling items confiscated at airports two years ago.
"Everything sells," says Kenneth Hess, director of
Pennsylvania's Bureau of Supplies and Surplus Operations. Last
December, the agency raked in more than $17,000 from selling items
it received from the TSA.
Hess added his office ships about 5,000 pounds of such items to
eBay buyers each month.
States that can't
handle the added workload of selling confiscated items on their own
have several options, too. They can forfeit confiscated booty to a
company called Science Application International. The giant
contractor has a five-year, $17 million government contract to
collect and discards the items.
There is also a federal website set up by the General Services
Administration that allows states to sell their wares online -- and
then split the profits with the GSA.
No matter who handles the sale, though, it's clear that very
little is thrown away.
"It all sells eventually," said James Smith Jr., who manages an
Arkansas agency that sells items on the GSA site. "It costs me
nothing to rerun the items for an auction. We have plenty of time
here."
"I'd love to go to
eBay, because we'd make a tremendous amount more," added Smith. "My
hands are tied by state law."
TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark stressed the agency does not "in
any way profit from the items left behind." Clark claims the TSA
"follows GSA regulations in disposing of voluntarily abandoned
property."
And it's not just predictable, boilerplate stuff that the TSA
turns over to the states. Pennsylvania officials cited an auto
transmission, a sausage grinder, a huge, artificial palm tree...
and an 18-inch fishing hook mounted on a plaque.
On carry-on luggage.
Which just goes to show that no matter what it is you're
selling... there's probably a market, somewhere.
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