Duchess of Argyll loses $150,000 in Jewelry at Glasgow Airport

Where travel once was a luxury, it’s now a necessity. With the increase in outgoing flights, luggage often gets misplaced or lost in airports all over the world. From putting neon signs on our luggage to buying customized luggage with our names engraved on them, one can never be too cautious when flying, especially if you are carrying $150,000 worth of jewelry with you.

The Duchess of Argyll lost her luggage with more than $150,000 worth of jewelry at Glasgow Airport after returning home from London in 2006. Among the items lost were some of the duchess’s most treasured possessions including a necklace she had received for her 21^st birthday and a Victorian family tiara that had been passed down to her along with a Cartier brooch, emerald ring and pearl earrings.

With her luggage nowhere to be found upon her arrival at the airport in 2006 the Duchess reported the case to British Airports Authority (BAA) and the police. Now six years later, the duchess luckily spotted the missing brooch in a Scottish auction catalog and instantly contacted the BAA.

Apparently, though, the BAA had found the jewelry and neglected to call the police or the Duchess. Instead they auctioned off the jewelry. The BAA claims that when they found the luggage a few months after the incident occurred there was no paperwork with it and so they did not know how to trace it back to the Duchess. Instead, they sold the jewelry valued at over $150,000 to a merchant jeweler for $7,500 and donated the earnings to charity as is their custom for unclaimed luggage.

In an effort to do right, the BAA is offering to reimburse the merchant in order to get the jewelry back to its rightful owner. Although the ring and the earrings have not yet appeared, the Duchess confessed that she was amazed they had found any of it. She thought the jewelry had been lost forever. Fortunately for Duchess of Argyll, we at Raymond Lee Jewelers have a beautiful variety of rings and pearl earrings to keep her company while her lost ones turn up.