If you forgot your laptop on the subway last month, you’re in luck: the MTA will sell it back to you.
A treasure trove of possessions that more or less sober New Yorkers forgot on the train is sitting in an MTA storeroom waiting to get picked up. Every night, transit workers collect a mother load of shit—chainsaws, golf clubs, violins, watches, even electric scooters, depending on the haul—that gets moved to a storeroom on 34th street and 8th avenue, and if no one claims for a few months, it’s posted online for auction.
The real payload, though, is in an unbelievable assortment of dirt-cheap gadgets some poor souls managed to ditch on the train. It’s hard to believe how many people forgot their laptops (Apples, HPs, Toshibas), portable DVD players and video cameras. There are vintage Gameboys and and Wii complete with two controllers. Someone who apparently would rather have been driving left a full GPS and an Epson mini-projector.
Some guy even left a fucking copy machine on the train—that’s up for grabs, too, if you happened to need one.
The price is right, says the MTA.
“People are paying bargain prices. Mostly it’s cents on the dollar,” Mike Zacchea, assistant chief operations officer for the Metropolitan Transit Authority told ANIMAL. “It’s the bargain hunters who find us.”
A lot of it is real janky–check out the desktop printer held together by two pieces of blue masking tape–but this ain’t the Apple Store, it’s New York’s leftovers. The auction goes until this Friday, June 7th and the next one won’t be for at least a few months. It’s only the dedicated internet trollers in the know who will get a piece of the pie. “There is a dedicated cadre that keeps their eyes peeled,” said Zacchea.
