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.

FMI: www.tsa.gov, www.gsa.gov