There was a story about this in the UK a couple of years back. Bags that were supposedly unidentifiable were sold off at public auctions (that anyone could attend, not just airline employees) and the proceeds went to charity.

The reason for the press was that out of all the bags the newspaper investigating purchased, they managed to identify the owner of over half the bags themselves through either the owners details found inside the bag, contacting names in an address book inside, company documents on headed paper etc. It just showed how "hard" some of the airlines really try to find the owners of lost bags.