(FORTUNE Magazine) – Imagine that during your next flight you're given the opportunity to rifle through the bags of your fellow passengers, pick out the stuff you like, and buy it at rock-bottom prices. That's what it's like to shop at the Unclaimed Baggage Center (UBC) in Scottsboro, Ala. A one-of-a-kind business, the UBC buys lost and unclaimed bags from airlines and sells their contents for up to 90% off retail prices. But the UBC's real allure isn't its discounts: Buying a $700 Burberrys raincoat for $65 is great, but not as great as digging through other people's stuff.

According to the UBC, less than 0.00005% of the nation's airline luggage ends up on its shelves every year. That might not sound like much, but it's enough for the UBC to offer a little of everything: used deodorant (50 cents); a Cartier watch ($11,500); a purple kayak; a kitchen sink; a set of golf clubs; a leaky lava lamp. In the UBC's library of lost books, The Vasectomy Information Manual is available for 50 cents. At the other end of the store is the women's lingerie section, featuring a wide array of used bras--including purple, powder blue, and polka dots--for $3 or less.

The customers pawing through this merchandise fall into two camps. First there are the residents of Scottsboro (pop. 15,000), who celebrate their town's reputation as the lost luggage capital of the world. "I don't never buy anything nowhere else," says Delbert Proctor, 80. To prove he's not exaggerating, Proctor declares he bought every article of clothing that he has on--including his eyeglass frames, socks, and underwear--at the UBC. Then there are the customers like Robert Greene of Lookout Mountain, Ga., who drives hundreds of miles in search of, say, a cut-rate pair of Ferragamo shoes.

Part of what keeps the UBC's clientele coming back is the hope that someday, one of their purchases might contain the hidden loot that is a part of UBC folklore. Joey Franklin, an Alabama minister and another loyal head-to-toe customer, tells a story about a man who bought a pair of pants, took down the hem, and found $1,000. A few months later this man's relative bought a double-breasted jacket and found a $500 bill sewn into each shoulder.

Yet not all of the UBC's rare finds are hidden from view. UBC owner Bryan Owens rattles off some of the more surrealistic items that have turned up in his store over the years: a coffin, a suitcase full of Egyptian artifacts (later sold by Christie's auction house), an 18th-century violin, a live rattlesnake ("We didn't sell it; we killed it"), and a set of prints signed by Salvador Dali. And what if you're the owner of one of these lost treasures and you want it back? "It's never happened," says Owens. "But I'd be glad to sell it back to you for about half of what you originally paid for it."

Owens' father, Doyle, founded the business in 1970 when he bought a cluster of lost bags from Trailways Bus Lines and resold their contents almost instantly. Before long he switched to airline luggage. The airlines love the fact that the UBC is hidden away in northern Alabama, since they're loath to admit that after making a good-faith attempt to reunite you with your bags--after all, they could owe you up to $1,250 if they didn't--they might end up selling them to the UBC--at undisclosed rates.

The UBC has expanded rapidly over the years, and now it even has satellite branches in the Alabama towns of Boaz and Decatur. Still, some customers lament the UBC's newer department-store trappings. They miss the days when you could have the voyeuristic thrill of buying a complete stranger's unopened bags. And the staff doesn't mistake genuine diamonds for fakes as often as it used to. Yet the UBC's customers can take comfort in knowing that as long as some bags don't reach their destination, there will always be a place where they can get a great deal on a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, Claudia's personalized gold bracelet, or a slightly scruffy set of luggage.

--Ed Brown