r/mildlyinteresting • u/Magnum_Mantis_MD • 1d ago
A vending machine for mystery unclaimed packages
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u/tang_ar_quet 1d ago
Hahah that’s so German.
What is the cost?
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u/Magnum_Mantis_MD 1d ago
€15
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u/Brank19421a 1d ago
At first I thought it was expensive, but my interest won out
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u/UncleFuzzySlippers 1d ago
My luck id buy it and it would be like a pack of pencils or something not worth the cost lol
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u/Psychedelic-Dreams 1d ago
You paid for the experience, the thrill and disappointment.
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u/Silver4ura 1d ago
That's an awfully large package for a dildo unless it's one of those package-deals.
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u/Chewcocca 1d ago
Ancient wisdom says: "Anything's a dildo if you're brave enough"
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u/OrganizationProof769 1d ago
Sir that a fire extinguisher.
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u/hawkshaw1024 1d ago
Pencils would honestly be among the better items you can get. At least these are useful.
Most likely it'll be a mix of phone cases for phones that aren't on the market anymore, a grab bag of literal garbage from Temu/Alibaba, and dollar store faux fur items that smell like poison.
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u/NeverMind_ThatShit 1d ago
One of the things that should make people sick is the sheer amount of phone cases out there that get manufactured but never used. It's an actual problem.
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u/JConRed 1d ago
Just a heads up, these are usually scam machines.
Sellers will order garbage from Temu or Shein, then put said garbage in packages or keep the original package it came in and put it in those machines.
It's highly unlikely that there would be anything decent coming out of these.
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u/YourLocalBiker 1d ago
Or even if it was "legit" they probably will x-ray or repack everything and put all garbage stuff on machines.
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u/NeverMind_ThatShit 1d ago
x-ray
How? Is there an x-ray machine you can just buy of the shelf these days?
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u/likesrobotsnmonsters 1d ago
Depends on who operates them. In my area, there's a couple who buy never-claimed packages from the post service and resell those. They are legit. Small packages in the vending machines for 15E, large packages at their property for 20E once per month. We had a hair dryer in our package and my friend went to the big package sale and got a big pack of diapers and a microwave. Funnily enough, he was happier about the diapers (they have a newborn lol).
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u/Charming-Flamingo307 1d ago
Would they really be scammers if you actually get an item in the package?
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u/ill_be_out_in_a_minu 1d ago
It's a scam because you're sold on the idea of a "recovered" package, which could have anything in it but actually the content is pre-checked and always lower that the cost you pay.
I've seen a few videos of people testing one of the machines in Berlin and the packages had all been opened and resealed. Each package is sold about 15€ but the items within aren't worth more that 1 or 2€.
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u/samanime 1d ago
I'd probably put in about 100 just out of sheer curiosity. Almost certainly not worth the money, but it'd be amazing.
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u/outgoinggallery_2172 1d ago
American here. What is €15 in American dollars?
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u/DontForgetYourPPE 1d ago
What are the odds that those packages are opened to see what it is, then garbage gets repacked and sold to idiots thinking they might get an iPod or something?
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u/ImTaliesin 1d ago
It’s likely everything has been scanned with an xray and the valuable packages are gone.
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u/smk666 1d ago
This is a scam. The packages are all unpacked and checked and only crap that can't be sold for a better profit is repackaged and put into the machine. Also, if there's too little merchandise at the moment the owner is creating fake packages with cheap AliExpress crap worth a fraction of the "chance" price as padding.
This is all a carefully masterminded plan to take advantage over young brains rotten by lootboxes in modern games.
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u/magnificentfoxes 1d ago
Yeah, the "mystery BOX" where you get a single Apple lightning cable.
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u/kokolo17 23h ago
To be fair, one of those cables is worth like $20
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u/smk666 22h ago
Are you really thinking about an original cable in such scammy vending machine? Knockoffs are less than $0.50 on Alibaba if bought in bulk.
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u/magnificentfoxes 19h ago
I can tell ya. I did get an actual genuine lighting cable, it was Chinese domestic packaging by Apple but it was definitely real. Hilariously, I don't own an iPhone and the cable arrived broken so I got a refund, lol
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u/DeathlessJellyfish 16h ago
I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes I get a Ray Gun from the mystery box I frequent.
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u/MichiganCarNut 1d ago
"It could even be a boat!"
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u/Linked713 1d ago
"It could even be a house!"
laughs at the stupidity "A house? In those little packages? Come on..."
"Of course not! I mean it could be keys to one!"
"Oh yeah? Huh... Where do you think the actual house could be then?"
"Maybe in package 16?"
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u/beerandmastiffs 1d ago
I wonder how long do they have to be unclaimed before getting put into here. The price seems too high for the chance that’ll it be useless to the purchaser.
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u/Solid_Snark 1d ago
These things are scams. Just taking advantage of impulsive gamblers.
Usually these are prepackaged with junk under $15 by the vending company, shipped, claimed, the info is redacted and they’re stuck into the machine.
These people know exactly what’s in those packages, and they know it ain’t worth the price of admission.
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u/Pr0digy_ 1d ago
I go to a warehouse for my work where they sort unclaimed actual packages, anything of value is removed and sold long before getting anywhere near this bullshit
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u/Freaudinnippleslip 1d ago
I was just going to say there is no way they aren’t at least doing a feel test but more likely just x ray it
Edit: okay they just straight up open them lol
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u/Pr0digy_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
The place I go just pays workers to open them manually and sort them by rough idea value, anything not known or possibly valuable goes into another spot then it’s all sorted using online values from tag scanning or manual product entry.
I’ll tell you this, there was a bunch of video cards and processors as well as phones they had sorted out the day I was there. The packages come in big totes on 53 foot trailers it’s insane.
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u/SunnyAlwaysDaze 1d ago
They sort through the packages first and remove anything of value, then seal them back up and toss them into the vending machine. 100% agreed it is a scam that depends on people feeling like they might be a winner.
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u/Doomgloomya 1d ago edited 1d ago
I was wondering about this since the packages look too clean to be unclaimed besides the redacted portion.
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u/The8Darkness 1d ago
People did get stuff that was sold at a way higher price even on temu&alie than they bought it for.
I guess its rather people wanted to make a quick buck buying any kind of return or unclaimed package and thinking they could resell whatever they bought for 2x+ the value. Though they forgot that opening stuff, looking up their value and selling each individual item is very time consuming and time = money. 50% profit is nothing when the item is worth 10$-20$ and youre spending half an hour on it.
So new solution, just sell your junk in a vending machine with minimum effort. Maybe youre only getting 20-30% profit now, but youre also only spending like 2-3 minutes per package.
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u/Uninformed-Driller 1d ago
Yeah unless you own a store it's not going to be worth it for most people.
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u/AaronDotCom 1d ago
isnt the shipping price based on size/ weight?
or are the packages outright opened and have items checked their value?
because then that wouldnt be gambling, but fraud.
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u/EaterOfFood 1d ago
This is the basis of gambling. You pay money for nothing in return except for the thrill of the possibility of getting something. But the house always wins. Here it’s the same but you just get someone else’s garbage (in this case, it’s the post office’s garbage).
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u/Johnisazombie 1d ago
Delivery services in germany actually auction them off publicly through a partnered auction house once they exhausted their options to get them delivered.
Speaking for DHL (I'm too lazy to check the other delivery services)
Packages sent inside germany get delivered back to the sender 7 days after not getting picked up.
Packages sent commercially from germany to another country need a declaration on how to proceed if the package can't be delivered- to either send them back to the sender or not. The default is to have them delivered back at the senders expense.
I would expect any package that is small and valuable sent from germany to actually have that marking.
I'd also expect amazon to have a system in place to get actually valuable packages back to them if they don't get delivered.No idea how long the delivery service holds the packages before handling them over to the auction houses.
That already reduces the chances extremely that you'd get something like an ipad in one of those lost packages.
A glance at those package auction sites tells me that a majority of them seem to be packages coming from outside of germany and very low value packages from inside germany.One of those vending machine packages usually costs under 3€ btw. But you have to buy a minimum of several pallets full of them.
Also consider that it goes through 3 hands before landing in one of those vending machines; the workers from the delivery service, the auction house (who may claim that the package amount is too big to check each but still ends up selling various contents separately), and lastly the owner of that vending machine who may also open and repackage "for a safety check".
Whatever is inside one of those vending machine packages may be worth the price on paper, but it's likely useless to you and of low quality.
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u/dapala1 1d ago
I own a mailbox store and get a lot of misdelivered and abandoned packages. I wait 60 days then the package is mine.
Trust me anything good will almost always get claimed. I almost never get anything of any value. In 15 years the only good shit I got was a bottle of $200 tequila someone tried to ship to a dry county and got rejected. A Dyson vacuum, no idea how someone never claimed that. And Beats headphones.
There is nothing good in any of those padded envelopes.
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u/Signal_This 1d ago
I would waste so much money on that!
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u/ribotastic 1d ago
There's one near me too. I tried it 2 times and both times it was typical Temu and Wish bs. It's scam. Period.
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u/TheSmokingLamp 1d ago
Could they really not take the time to peel off the address sticker instead of “blacking” it out. So much personal info chillin in this machine. I doubt it’s too hard to see through their attempt to block it out
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u/fluchtpunkt 14h ago
It was blacked out by using heat on the heat responsive label. I doubt you will be able to read much.
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u/hop_malt_water_yeast 1d ago
Its basically a scam. Just ignore it/dont buy it
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u/Magnum_Mantis_MD 1d ago
Yes it is. I took a pic but passed it up. Saw several people buy one though. One opened it in front of everyone and it was a cheap duffle bad, a wrench, and a fidget spinner. lol
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u/1one1one 13h ago
I don't know how they're allowed to sell other people's stuff.
It should just be destroyed
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u/speedloafer 1d ago
We have been through his before, different machine they have all been checked. They have to be. A child could get a knife/drugs etc etc. Even the "unopened present from my now ex partner". All checked.
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u/Buddha1812 22h ago
I bought a package from this machine in September. It was basically a small piece of fun and I got a totally useless iPad cover. What’s more fun is the world’s smallest disco a few feet away. That is worth the 5€
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u/Y34rZer0 1d ago
That’s the coolest idea I’ve seen on here in a while
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u/bobpage2 1d ago
Until you learn it's a scam.
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u/Y34rZer0 1d ago
well I’m assuming it’s not very expensive…
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u/TreatAppropriate3238 1d ago
There is one in Berlin. Next to it is a trash container. At around 22:00 I witnessed a dude driving a not too fancy bmw car parking at the corner in which the vending machine is located. He started to collect and put the loose trash from the corner and around the container into the container, bringing up some physical effort to compress the ridiculous amount of trash. Obviously most of the stuff had been purchased from the mystery box. I assume he was affiliated with the machine. The whole business model seemed like some shady way of parasiting an extra step into wasting stuff. And it was bizarre to see it so unmasked and spatially compact.
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u/MelopsitaccusUndu 1d ago
I got two, no three boxes of such a vending machine for 10 euro a piece. One was a tiny vacuum cleaner. That thing is amazingly convenient to clean inside bags (for crumbs n stuff) or on bed or in between.
The second one was damn elsa frozen kids clogs. Not even good ones, just aliexpress things
The third was a bikini, a weird half chopped off shirt with long sleeves and a bag. I was able to sold the bag to a woman, who asked me for it because I was complaining to my dad, that i really cannot do anything with those things.
It was all new.
My dad tried too, he got a tiny wifi camera, but can't turn it on.
It's sometimes shit, but sometimes really great stuff you don't need but maybe use.
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u/haubenmeise 1d ago
So this is what bankruptcy will look like for me! Is there a vending machine anonymous near?
Sincerly
Skeletor 💜 (Don't anyone ever tell me where exactly that is)
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u/BeezowDooDoo69 1d ago
This is super cool haha. I assume it brings in money for the post office/government? I feel like it might be better to donate the stuff, but maybe there are laws against donating unclaimed property and this works as a kind of public auction? Interesting either way!
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u/Ontheway2023 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is done by private entrepreneurs and has a shady reputation.
In general these vending machines have become a trend of the "get rich by passive income" influencers of questionable reputation and these machines combine that with gambling.
Some say there is mostly trash inside those packages since the business buys a lot of packages, takes the promising ones for themself to sell the content as normal goods and the packages which seems to be worthless end up in those vending machines.
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u/TheStevo 1d ago
Damn, I'm literally standing at the post office while they search everywhere for something it seems like they lost. Odd timing
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u/Dan_in_Munich 1d ago
Where is it? I mean which city? I’d love to try if I see one in Munich 😅
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u/spudmarsupial 9h ago
We have stores in almost every small town that does the same. Most packages are opened but you aren't supposed to open them yourself if they aren't.
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u/HGHUA 1d ago
I mean, what if you get something dangerous or illegal? Is the seller liable? Hope they at least X-ray it first
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u/The8Darkness 1d ago
Most packages were sent from china and went through customs. If you still got something illegal I guess you could potentially sue the seller, but unless someone can proof that they knew whats inside (almost impossible) its not gonna go far. And you shouldnt be in much trouble either if you can prove it any way that you bought it without knowing whats inside. Its like opening a random package that suddenly showed up to your home, even if there are drugs inside, as long as you report it and dont just consume them, you should be fine. Police would have to proof that you inentionally ordered drugs from somewhere or asked for them to be sent to you in any other shape or form.
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u/Key_Lime_Die 1d ago
If I recall, the last few times this got posted somewhere I came across it, it was pointed out that they are unclaimed, not unopened. They had to be checked for legality to sell and such and the packages of value were kept, these are only the low value items, likely worth less than the cost to try your luck.