Arizona Department of Revenue holds auction for unclaimed property

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - The things people have in their safety deposit boxes... rings coins, more than 250 items all left and unclaimed for more than five years are now here at Sierra Auction where they've seen it all.

"One time we auctioned off a set of teeth, gold teeth, so we get just about everything," Mark Feuerer said.

Feuerer is the owner and says you never know what you're doing to find.

"We've had an old, old map... I remember this old 1800 map that you just couldn't find anywhere else," he said. "It belonged in a museum."

The person who that map once belonged to had time to get it back.

The Department of Revenue has an unclaimed property unit that goes through an exhaustive process of trying to find the owners of the abandoned safety deposit boxes. They work with other states, send out notices and ads, and every year they end up returning a lot of people's property.

"In 2016-2017 when we returned more than $57 million, it ranged from under a dollar to, in one case, over $2 million," Ed Greenberg said.

But for those who don't come forward, their stuff ends here.

The proceeds from tomorrow's auction are transferred to a custodial account and that's where it will stay until someone realizes what they lost and file a claim.

Online auction bids can be placed at www.sierraauction.com.