Rings, rosaries and cars put up for auction at Pittsburgh airport

If civilizations are judged by what they leave behind, then future generations will marvel over the Cards Against Humanity game that wound up in the lost-and-found at Pittsburgh International Airport. The game touts the power to make “your life worth living for up to three consecutive minutes.”

Nine million passengers pass through the airport in a given year, leaving behind over the past 12 months: a Steamfast carpet cleaner, 327 pairs of sunglasses, enough shoes and hats to fill big boxes, and enough rosaries to fill a table tray. In all, passengers left behind some 10,000 items, which were put up for auction Saturday after going unclaimed for at least 30 days.

Many people who thronged the hangar-size Heavy Equipment Building at the airport for the annual auction were first-timers, curious and looking for something to do on a crisp fall day — people like friends Arlene Renna, 70, of Plum, and Linda Hudak, 60, of Export.

“It’s a nice day,” Ms. Renna told Ms. Hudak. “Let’s go.”

Springdale resident Jon Sinka, 36, had a similar thought.

“It’s something to do on a Saturday morning,” he said. “Why not throw a number out there?”

Beau Stoioff, 22, of Donora, had his eye on a golf cart-like maintenance vehicle that airport staff had put up for auction. It was his third time at the auction, and he said he sometimes simply resells what he buys at a higher price than what he paid.

But fluid streamed from under

the vehicle, and he worried others might bid up the price higher than its value.

“People get carried away,” he said.

Cars and trucks — 15 in all — that people left at the airport and never claimed also were auctioned off, attracting among the highest bids. Behind the cracked bumpers and sagging suspensions were the life stories of the people who drove them, owned them, even loved them.

There was the 1997 Ford Ranger XLT pickup with the back window of the cap busted out, the gate painted white with brush strokes still evident and four packs of unopened insulin syringes in the bed.

Diabetes? Drug abuse? There was no way to tell.

Then there was the champagne-colored Lincoln Town Car Ultimate that first hit the road in 2003. The odometer showed 121,813 miles.

“The body’s good,” Jefferson County resident Clinten Williams, 37, said after giving the four-door Lincoln the once-over.

“They’re good cars,” he said. “I’d put it on the road.”

Ms. Hudak was less certain.

“You could put four bodies in there,” she said, pointing into the gaping trunk, then added “maybe as a second car.”

Glassport resident Will Donofrio, 90, eyed the Lincoln for wife Mary, 75. He came to the auction with his brother, Arthur Donofrio, 75, of West Mifflin, who talked up the purchase.

“Look at how nice,” he said. “It’s a Lincoln.”

Although abandoned at the airport, the Lincoln with the tired suspension, wasp’s nest in the trunk and West Virginia registration that expired in 2016 revealed something else about the person who parked it at the airport and never looked back: It had a Blow N Go locking device that requires the driver to blow into a tube to test for the presence of alcohol before the car can be started.

Law enforcement agencies can mandate use of the device for people who’ve been convicted of drunken driving.

“An electronics nightmare,” one woman said, shaking her head and walking away after considering how to disconnect the Blow N Go.

When the auction got underway at 10 a.m., the men’s wedding bands, eight of them, various metals, sold for $150. The box of rosaries, $175.

But in the end, neither Mr. Donofrio nor Mr. Williams got the Lincoln.

A middle-aged woman, who bought at least one other car at the auction and declined to give her name, submitted the highest bid, the card she used to signal the auctioneer wrapped around a pack of Parliament cigarettes. She said she planned to try to resell the Lincoln to “make a buck.”

“How much did I pay,” she asked aloud, suddenly uncertain.

$1,300, she was told. “That’s not bad,” she said.