Suzanne Herel amuses in the SF Chronicle with Bureaucrats get EBay fever - State sells penknives confiscated at airports at online auction:
That pocketknife you surrendered to airport security screeners might now be tucked away in someone else's pocket -- someone who bought it on EBay.Hmm, kind of like taxes.
Under the handle CaliforniaGold2000, the state is using the Internet auction house to convert scores of confiscated items to cash.
So far, $16,281 has been made selling objects taken from passengers at Oakland and Sacramento airports -- the only ones in Northern California to participate in the state program.
Among the oddest items confiscated and sold were at least three circular saws, hatchets, curtain rods and a little girl's baton, said Robb Deignan, spokesman for the surplus property disposal program, a division of the California Department of General Services.
Also sold: 5,364 pocketknives, 350 pounds of scissors, 594 corkscrews and 309 leatherman tools.
The Transportation Security Administration, which employs most airport screeners, allows airports to decide how to get rid of the mountains of items collected, said spokesman Nico Melendez.
They are too numerous to return to their owners, Deignan said.
"They don't own it. They took it away -- that doesn't mean you relinquish ownership," he said. "I don't want to use the word 'theft,' but it starts smelling like it."Even more like taxes!
Follow this link to check out their auctions. It looks like they are selling the knives in large lots.
