What is the strangest item you have ever left on a bus?

1 month ago Mon 13th Jan 2025

Image of lots of random items with the text "Bussed & Found"Over 13,000 items were left on Brighton & Hove and Metrobus buses in 2024 that were subsequently handed in to the lost property team. But where a lot of these items were exactly what you would expect (wallets, phones, keys, hats, scarves etc), some of them might surprise you…

Last year saw three guitars, two violins, a trumpet, and even a tambourine left behind by musicians, along with a number of surprisingly large items including a canoe, a grass trimmer, a microwave, a wardrobe, an electric cooker, two safes, a tent, a pool cue, and an entire fridge. One day even saw 16 boxes of particulate filter masks discovered too.

The most common items, in order of most popular, were:

 1)	Wallets/purses	1273 2)	Keys	1205 3)	Glasses	1203 4)	Phones	680 5)	Hats	585 6)	Umbrellas	475 7)	Bottles/Flasks	467 8)	Jackets	428 9)	Rucksacks	391 10)	Books	347   11)	Beanies	  331 12)	Caps	322 13)	Headphones	235 14)	Scarves/Shawls	234 15)	Sunglasses	224 16)	Cables/Chargers	206 17)	Hoody/Jumpers	199 18)	Handbags	135 19)	Walking Sticks	78 20)	Soft Toys	71

Among smaller, but equally unusual, items were a frying pan, a set of false teeth, a suitcase full of shoes, a box of hairnets, a shoulder massager, a stethoscope, an urn containing ashes, an inflatable bed, a spirit level, two hoovers, a canvas depicting ‘the ten commandments’, a gold purse containing a single Pokémon card, a single purple dumbbell, a brass rabbit encrusted with gems, five boxes of tiles and a rude drawing. Oh, and a phone charging panda.

A whopping 68 people forgot their passports last year, and five people managed even to leave their laundry on board. Unfortunately, this is not a service currently offered by the bus company.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there were more umbrellas found than there are days in the year (475), and over 700 instances where cash was handed in to our team. This was a total of over £9,000 handed in with most of it being returned to owners. So well done to all the honest passengers using our network! 

And if you’re interested in fashion, flowers were everywhere last year with three times as many items sporting floral print than second place (dogs). Checkout our top 20 here:

1)	Floral	126 2)	Dogs	41 3)	Leopard print	39 4)	Spotted	39 5)	Cats	38 6)	Animal (generic)	37 7)	Camouflage	36 8)	Unicorns	35 9)	Dinosaurs	31 10)	Chequered 	29 11)	Striped	29 12)	Rabbit/bunny	22 13)	Birds	20 14)	Butterflies	19 15)	Skulls	18 16)	Fish	13 17)	Dragons	10 18)	Sharks	10 19)	Elephants	9 20)	Pandas 	8

Items left can also provide a little snapshot of ‘what’s hot and what’s not’. For example, 90s/00s retro is king by the amount of Nokia phones (53) Puffa Jackets (24) DVDs (12) and cassette tapes (3) discovered on the buses, along with a Jonny Cash CD and fountain pen. 

But high fashion was also abundant: Last year the company discovered garments from Ted Baker (18) Louis Vuitton (14), Gucci (11), Calvin Klein (11), Ray-Ban (8), Michael Kors (5) Prada (4) and Burberry (4), along with two Cartier bracelets and a Valentino handbag!

And finally, swinging into pop culture’s first place, Spiderman was the favorite character of 2024, featuring on 32 items, followed by Mickey Mouse (18), Hello Kitty (13) and Pokémon (12). 

And for all those items that don’t get claimed, the teams at Brighton & Hove Buses and Metrobus donate to local charities like Rockinghorse Appeal, Dogs Trust and Alzheimer’s Society (and many more), and in 2024 managed to help raise almost £1000 through donated items.

If you have left an item on one of our buses, please get in touch with our customer services team who will be happy to help you. Items are kept for 1 month in our stores before they are donated.

You can contact Metrobus at [email protected] or call on 01293 449191.