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

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:

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:

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 contact Brighton & Hove Buses at [email protected] or call on 01273 886200.