In Elsene, in a new shop close to the Flageyplein, you can buy unopened, lost postal packages by the kilo. What you buy remains a surprise, as you are not allowed to open the parcel until after the purchase. This mystery box trend has arrived here from France.
Great news for fortune-hunters: pop-up store in Elsene sells undelivered parcels by the kilo
Colin Clapson
Published:
Across Europe countless parcels are never collected nor can they be returned to sender, for instance due to lack of correct addresses. As a result, the parcels don’t get delivered and the courier companies get stuck with them. After some time these companies become the official owners and are able to resell these "lost" parcels at auction, where there is demand from specialised firms.
The shop Pile ou Face (Head or Tails) run by Arnaud Userstam is one such buyout firm hoping to make a profit from selling on these parcels to the public at large. One shop already operates in Wavre (Walloon Brabant), now a second outlet has opened in trendy Elsene. The parcels are anonymised and sold by weight, at 16 euros per kilo.
"Until last year, this kind of packet was burned," M Userstam explains. "It was too expensive for courier services to store them. But now there is a European law that bans their burning, and so we buy up the parcels and resell them."
Courier companies cannot simply resell lost parcels. In Belgium, for example, the sale of unclaimed parcels is subject to strict regulations. Elsewhere in Europe, the rules are more lenient. The Amazon parcels purchased by Pile ou Face, which now gone on sale, come from all across Europe except Belgium.
"We transform these lost packages into accessible treasure and are working towards a more sustainable economy," M Userstam explains. His argument is clear: without trade in lost packages, they are simply destroyed. The parcels usually contain brand-new items, and that is bad for the environment.
Surprise
Neither Pile ou Face nor the customer knows exactly what is in the parcels, making it a surprise for everyone. Most often the parcels contain clothes, but some people are lucky enough to pick up a smartphone or other expensive consumer electronics for as little as 16 euros. One customer even found a mobile phone worth 700 euros in her parcel.
Similar mystery box shops have been a huge success in France for some time now. The sales outlets in Elsene and Wavre are pop-up stores. The intention is to find out how much interest there is among the Belgian public.