Angela Erickson spent the better part of last year lovingly sewing two quilts. One, meant for her uncle, depicts Utah artifacts. The other, displaying a brilliantly-intricate elephant, was for her dad.

She shipped them to Illinois just in time for Christmas.

They didn’t make it.

“I can’t remake these quilts,” she said fighting back tears. “They don’t realize how much time goes into these, and to see that it’s lost and they may never see it is really hard.”

Erickson says her local postmaster gave her the devastating news that her package had been declared “dead.” The best-case scenario is that it’s on its way to a secretive facility known as the Mail Recovery Center (MRC).

Think of the MRC as the lost and found of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

It has a staff whose job it is to open packages and try to track down the owners. Anytime they don’t find the rightful owner, within a few months, the USPS gets to auction it off and pocket the profits.

Pressing the USPS for specifics on how much they auction and profit from the auctions, reporter Matt Gephardt of KUTV, WJLA’s sister station, was stonewalled.

A spokesperson stated that USPS doesn’t want to give away “trade secrets,” saying:

The information requested is being withheld in its entirety.

The USPS works with a private company called GovDeals to manage the auctions, which are conducted online. Online photos show large boxes stuffed with just about everything you can imagine.

The photos allow bidders to see what is on the surface of the boxes but not what is beneath.

GovDeals declined to answer questions about the auctions, referring Gephardt to USPS for comment. In addition to refusing to provide records, USPS refused an interview for this story. Read more