pilferage of checked baggage contents

Reef Fish wrote:
terry wrote:
One should never travel with anything of value in their checked baggage.
There are two parts to the subject of loss. Sadly, you hear stories all
the time of people making claims of loss from travel or otherwise that
are not accurate or fraud.

I am late reading this thread, and what's said in the paragraph above
is certainly true.

But I am familiar with the "urban legend" about scuba divers should
or should not check and whether they should or should not LOCK.

I have travelled literally millions of miles by air WITHOUT locking
my scuba luggage and very LOUDLY mark them to be SCUBA
related. I've checked regulators (very expensive), camera
equipment (less expensive) and other scuba related items for
YEARS leaving my luggage UNLOCKED (before air travel
regulation required them to be, after 9/11) long before 9/11
with MY theory that if theives want to steal my equipment, I
would rather they take it out and not CUT my bags (which
are also expensive :-)).

I had NEVER lost a single item in all these years of air travel
that could be attributed to "stealing" by luggage handlers.

I did. They went right past my scuba gear and took the
jewlery and a few stray pesos. Took the watch as well,
probably thought it was gold or something. Something
valuable isn't so much an point of interest as something
easily converted to cash, such as gold, money, etc.
Most of them probably don't know the cost of many things
in luggage. They just know what they can easily sell,
pawn, whatever. You could probably leave a $5000
piece of diagnostic test equipment and have no problem,
but have a $100 watch sitting right next to it stolen.