Illinois’ Unclaimed Property Auction Is More Random Than My Amazon Search History

This week is an interesting week in Illinois.

Humans objectively have a lot of stuff. Some of us (like my family) never get rid of anything so all of the stuff is passed down through generations, voluntarily or not. So what happens to all the stuff that remains unclaimed in the state of Illinois?

It gets auctioned off this week.

Scrolling through the iBid Illinois online auction, it is a collection of quite random stuff. Some of it is pretty, like this 1924 wrist watch:

The auction is done through the Illinois State Treasurer's office. There's hundreds of items up for auction, including furniture, tools, vehicles, a generator (?), and even lab equipment (??). There's a whole pallet of HP PC's for the tech fiends, a cart with a Keurig, some concrete blocks, and a handicap bus if that's on your shopping list.

But a lot of the items you'll see in the auction are valuable coins, jewelry (like a 14-karat gold charm bracelet), and unusual money like a 1783 Spanish Milled Dollar.

The auction continues through Friday. If you're wondering if you have unclaimed property in Illinois, you can check through the State Treasurer's office. You could have unclaimed money too, which would be probably more likely than winning the lottery.

If you see stuff in the unclaimed property auction you want to bid on, you have to register with iBid (the platform the State Treasurer's office is using for it) first. Check it every so often this week to see where the bid is.