Their loss, your gain

Need a used tiara? How about a box of crutches? They hit the auction block today at TIA.

By LEONORA LaPETER ANTON, Times Staff Writer
Published November 3, 2007

Tampa International Airport's Communications Relations representative Christine Osborn tries on the beauty queen crown to be auctioned in the same lot of goods that includes a satellite dish, a hub cap, a cooler, a few luggage racks, a baby seat and a stuffed devil.
	[Cherie Diez | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Cherie Diez | Times] Christine Osborn looks at the satellite dish to be auctioned in the same lot of miscellanous goods that included a beauty queen crown, a hub cap, a cooler, a few luggage carriers, a baby seat and a stuffed devil. Lots of full luggage are in the background. [Cherie Diez | Times] Over 100 medical items (canes, crutches, walkers) in foreground, and numerous baby strollers, in the background, are up for auction. "Who suddenly doesn't need their crutches or cane?" asked Christine Osborn.

TAMPA - There is a beauty queen somewhere who is missing her 10-inch-tall tiara. And somehow 100 people made it out of Tampa International Airport this year without their walkers, canes and crutches.

These items and almost 11,000 others from the airport's lost and found will be auctioned off at 9:30 a.m. today. In an airport hangar large enough for three 737s, the items are laid out like specimens from an archaeological dig. Only this is us, now.

"As you can see, this is the electronic age," said Sharon C. Weaver, a senior director at TIA, motioning to tables with dozens of iPods, laptops and cameras.

It all equates to this:

We lose.

They find.

Clothes. Strollers. Jewelry. Tennis rackets. Cell phones. A map of the Caribbean. A guitar handmade in New York by Carlo Robelli. A gold necklace with the name Muriel in cursive. A beatup Rolex Submariner watch. A 14K gold ring with a 1.1-carat diamond appraised at $1,450.

The ring and another one like it will be sold individually, as will the laptop computers, the cameras, the iPods, the leather jackets, the electronic games and 67 pieces of fine jewelry.

But many items are sold in jumbo lots.

So the beauty crown comes with an empty golf club case, a satellite dish, two hip-high dusty Pioneer speakers, a large stuffed red devil, a couple of luggage racks, a baby seat, a red cooler and a 4-foot-tall fan.

The Submariner comes with 249 other watches. And the walkers, canes and crutches also will be sold en masse.

"The one that always gets me is all the medical equipment," said Christine Osborn, a TIA community relations coordinator. "Who suddenly doesn't need crutches and walkers? There must be some healing going on in the airport."

And if you're feeling adventurous, you can bid on mystery items: 25 still-full, shrink-wrapped suitcases. The top bidder will have to take it all home knowing not much else about the contents, although airport workers try to pull out obviously valuable items. In years past, bidders have paid up to $1,000 for mystery suitcases.

Risky bidding can yield results, Weaver says. A man who bought a pallet of suitcases a few years ago said he found $2,000 tucked behind a picture frame.

Weaver said airport workers try to reunite items with their original owners but are successful only about 10 percent of the time. And the volume of forgotten items has become so great the airport recently made the lost and found worker's job full time.

The money raised from the auction (cash, MasterCard, Visa only) goes toward the airport's operating fund. An auction 18 months ago drew 1,000 people and generated $24,600.

Today's auction will be the airport's 10th. Previous ones have featured an artificial limb, a chandelier and a car door.

If you go

Items to be auctioned can be viewed starting at 8 a.m. at the former United Airlines airport hangar, 4102 N West Shore Blvd. If you think you've lost an item that may be auctioned off today, arrive at 7:30 a.m. and speak with someone at the door. You must show or prove you owned it. The auction begins at 9:30 a.m.

Items left behind

Here's a look at the lost items TIA is auctioning today:

3,500 pieces of clothing

250 books

1,500 pieces of jewelry

67 pieces of fine jewelry

250 watches

50 computer flash drives

22 iPods

9 leather jackets

34 cameras

5 laptop computers

500 cell phones and accessories

2 diamond rings

If you lose something at the airport, call (813) 801-6086 to report it. If you lose something on a plane, call the airline.

[Last modified November 2, 2007, 22:47:10]