CONCORD, N.H. — In the market for a crate of Boston and Harvard hoodies and baby onesies? How about a suitcase full of pork rinds? Seek out your nearest state surplus store, where many airports nationwide send their unclaimed and confiscated items.
Airports in Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire send everything, from box loads of pocket knives and scissors to unclaimed luggage, to New Hampshire’s state surplus division.
Items at its Concord warehouse earlier this month included a hoverboard — the hot holiday present at Christmas — a walker with handbrakes, lacrosse and hockey sticks and an impressive collection of snow globes.
Manager John Supry says buyers line up at the door every Monday to be first inside for the weekly public sale.
“We deal with anything and everything here,” said Supry, who relies on Internet research and gut feel to price his odd assortment. “We’ve been accused of making up prices,” he said. “We do! What else are you gonna do?”
Michael McCarthy, TSA spokesman for the Northeast, said more than 24,000 items were left at Boston’s Logan International Airport in 2015, including 1,700 laptops and 610 cellphones. The TSA will not turn over to surplus any electronic devices with memory storage, McCarthy said. Also not bound for surplus are illegal items including firearms and switchblades and jewelry valued in excess of $500.
Airports generally hold on to seized and abandoned items for a time — typically 30 to 60 days — to allow owners a chance to claim them. Paul Bradbury, director of the Maine International Jetport, said his airport is small enough at 1.8 million passengers a year to be able to reunite most mislaid items with their owners.
Vermont State Surplus Program specialist Mark Casey said he gets “a lot of butter knives” and cheese picks from Burlington International Airport, but also some pricier items like a Chateau Lagouile handcrafted corkscrew worth $200 that he priced at $50. He got no takers and locked it away after a handcrafted knife was stolen off a table.
Inventory last week included a sculptor’s hammer, a variety of tools and a “girly” pink hammer — “nothing too much out of the ordinary,” Casey said.
Surplus departments handle more than found property. Michael Connor, the New Hampshire Department of Administrative Services deputy commissioner, said retired state vehicles and farm equipment, plus items state offices no longer need, end up passing through.
In the past month it auctioned off some new, stainless steel commercial grade kitchen equipment purchased for the National Guard regional training center, after the National Guard said it couldn’t reimburse the state. Connor said that left the state holding the bag — and the equipment.
“That’s the first time it’s ever happened and it better be the last,” Connor said. “Everything has a story.”
