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By Anders Anglesey
U.S. News Reporter
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Items ranging from alligator heads to a fire truck have gone up for auction after being abandoned at Pittsburgh airport.
Hundreds of unclaimed items from the airport's lost and found went on sale at Allegheny County Airport Authority's annual auction on Saturday morning.
The lots included preserved alligator heads, dozens of iPads and a pair of new Christian Louboutin high heels—as well as a truck formerly used by the airport's fire department.
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Ahead of the auction, a team sorts through thousands of items to determine what can go under the hammer.
In a video posted online by the airport's Blue Sky Pit magazine, customer experience manager Elise Gomez explained how the items ended up going up for sale.
Gomez said: "Items are turned into our lost and found and we hold those items for 30 days.
"So, whenever they are not claimed after 30 days, we have to send them to the airport auction and that's how it all starts.
"We spend about two whole days here, going through the different items and making sure we are categorizing them and putting them in different boxes.
"It's always interesting seeing what is left behind. We have a rice maker and we have a lot of very strange items. Portable toilet seats, some alligator head souvenirs. We have high-end Louboutin brand new high heels with red bottoms, so really anything and everything can be found here."
Nearly 1,000 pieces of jewelry, more than 500 electronic items and nine vehicles left in the airport parking lots were also up for grabs, according to Blue Sky Pit. The fire truck was a 2001 model that had been part of the airport's fleet before being replaced by a new vehicle in 2019, the magazine reported.
Regular auction-goer Roger Boehm, 55, from McKeesport told TribLive that he won nine bids by 11 a.m., adding: "It's just fun—the bidding—and it's relatively cheap."
Proceeds from the sale of personal items that were left at the airport will go to the ACAA charity, which supports the airport's military lounge, art in the airport program and aviation scholarships.
The last in-person auction in 2019 raised $83,627 for the charitable foundation, according to Blue Sky Pit.
Last year, a scaled-down, online-only event was held because of the COVID pandemic.
Dawn Bailey, manager of landside and terminal operations at the airport, told Blue Sky Pit: "We are excited to be returning to an in-person event. We have two years' worth of left-behind items for the public."
Newsweek has contacted Pittsburgh airport for comment.
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