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One of the many joys (not!) of modern air travel is the possibility - ever more recurrent nowadays - that once you have checked in your luggage at the airport you may never see it ever again. Seasoned travellers know all about it and put their essentials in hand luggage but there are always those who blithely believe in the trustworthiness of airlines and baggage handlers and put all their best stuff in their cases - only to be cruelly and forever parted from it once they reach their destination.

Hundreds of thousands of suitcases get lost every year around the world but they don't just disappear into a black hole. Even the ones that never find their owners again end up somewhere. In fact, that somewhere is usually some form of auction house that sells them to people like you and me. In America, the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama receives 800,000 visitors per year and is, incredibly, the state’s biggest tourist attraction. Mmm, Alabama...where a lost luggage centre is the biggest tourist attraction...clearly a cool and happening place to be....must visit.

After six months of being unclaimed, most airlines will sell the cases at auction. These are auctions that anyone can attend so you or I could go and bid on someone else’s lost property.

There are two paths you can take at the auction. The auctioneers take valuable items out of the suitcases first and sell them separately. This includes stuff like electronic items, shoes, jewellery and posh toiletries. Of course you can bid on these and then sell them for more elsewhere if you know what you’re doing. Or you can keep them for yourself - some people get skis, cameras and the like nice and cheaply this way. A £500 snowboard recently sold for £75 so you could either keep it for yourself or sell it on for more. Alternatively, you can bid for the full suitcases and hope there are some good clothes, shoes, books etc in them that you could flog. This is a bit of a lottery. Basically you buy them sight-unseen and auctioneers only give the vaguest details about what is in each suitcase. They do tell you whether the clothes are clean or not though. It's up to you if you're happy dealing with someone else's dirty underwear.

The suitcases sell from around £5 to £50. Even if the case is just full of clothes you should be able to sell it all for more than that.

The best thing to do with these cases is to stick some rubber gloves on, open up the case when you get it home and wash everything. Then you can iron it, photograph it and get some decent cash on eBay. The books can go on Amazon and even toiletries and washbags can be sold. Of course you can also sell the suitcase and make some cash on that too.

It’s a pretty easy way to make or save money. You don’t have any expenses to cover, only the price of what you buy. If you bid on individual items do make sure that you only bid on things you understand, as you could find yourself losing money rather than making it it doesn’t sell for more than you bought it for.

There are plenty of bargains up for grabs and buying luggage can be quite fun to do. You really do never know what you’re going to end up with, sometimes you’ll find a real hidden treasure, and other times you won’t be so lucky.

The best place to start out would be Greasbys in Tooting, London. Greasbys is London’s lost luggage hotspot; it’s here that British Airways (one of the world's biggest baggage losers) sell their lost luggage. They have auctions every Tuesday at 10.30am and viewing is held on the Monday before, between 2.30pm and 6.30pm, giving you a chance to suss out which bags you want to buy - although you only get to see the outside of it so you can only guess at the contents. It’s all part of the fun though, and who knows what gems will be unveiled?!

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