USA Today’s Gary Stoller reports that government agencies are making more than a few bucks by selling the prohibited items surrendered by travelers to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. Often, the items are put up for bid on eBay.

TSA, which makes no money from the items left at checkpoints, disposes of most items the same way other federal agencies dispose of property with commercial value: It gives it to state and local governments, who are free to donate or sell it. That’s how people like Hess get involved.
States like Pennsylvania sell boxes, boxes and more boxes of scissors, tools and pocketknives. A 39-pound box containing 500 Swiss Army knives sold on eBay in 2004 for $595 to a California buyer — the highest sale of Pennsylvania’s state surplus office since it began selling surrendered airport items two years ago.

But it’s not only the predictable stuff that TSA turns over to the states. Pennsylvania officials remember an auto transmission, a sausage grinder, a huge, artificial palm tree and an 18-inch fishing hook mounted on a plaque.

Kentucky’s Jill Midkiff says “someone actually tried to carry a chain saw onto a plane.” Arkansas officials pulled out ax heads last month. They’ve seen cast-iron skillets, dumbbells and walking sticks with voodoo symbols.

“It all sells eventually,” agrees James Smith Jr., who manages an Arkansas agency that, under state law, must sell its TSA items and federal surplus property at a federal website run by the General Services Administration. GSA and the state split profits evenly.

Smith says his agency must put some items up for auction two or three times before they sell. But someone who needs the items — a hobbyist or a reseller — always comes along to buy them, he says. “It costs me nothing to rerun the items for an auction,” he says. “We have plenty of time here.”